The Magpies Nest (24 page)

He had to agree to it. But when she was in her own room she sat for several minutes thinking about him conscientiously. She had purposely not told him of meeting him before; it still seemed amusing to have that in reserve. A sudden chill roused her out of her abstraction; she got hastily into a dressing-gown and drew her chair to the light and fell to work. And her dreams were not of him, nor of any young man.

Yet it did not seem to surprise her particularly when he came again the next night, and many nights thereafter. It was rather comfortable to see him sitting there in that atrocious mahogany rocking-chair, with the light focussing on his head and his eager gaze seeking hers so frankly. She was a social creature, if not strictly gregarious; and then, too, he so obviously exerted himself to interest her—not a common habit of young men as she knew them—and he looked so thoroughly alive, and he looked happy! She owned to being tired herself; a lassitude was creeping into her veins, and his vitality stimulated her.

Or, if he did not come in the evening, it might be because he had already found some place she must see that afternoon. As a cicerone she found him indefatigable, and whatever was unusual in New York he knew. Old bits of it, forgotten corners, and such historic landmarks as still retain more than a name; and then those exotic sections where the Old World or the Orient has been transplanted bodily. She liked Fraunces Tavern better than Rector's, and the sight of Betty Jumel's andirons standing before Betty's cold hearth was almost as good, after a tiring morning, as the sight of her own fender. And a cup of tea at Yen Mok's drunk out of thin cups without handles, with neither sugar nor milk, had all the East in it, and her own lazy days in Seattle, watching the blue Pacific. She could never have enjoyed the city so well without his eyes to see it through.

But when he still talked of friendship, her first rather cheerful cynicism faded to genuine perplexity and then turned and rent her as a hypocrite. He was in earnest. After he had told her as much about himself as she invited, and included an account of Grace Sturtevant in the recital, he dispersed her doubts with one simple remark.

"I want you to meet Grace," he said. "She's the nearest to a sister I've got; and she can't help but like you. She's clever, too; you two ought to get on famously. It must be lonesome for you here without any women friends."

How long had she known him? Less than a month, at any rate; but a desert island could not have furthered the acquaintance more than her solitary existence.

"That is very kind of you," she murmured. "More than kind. Of course I should be pleased to meet your cousin. You really are good to put yourself out."

"I'm not putting myself out," he said almost impatiently. "I like you more than any woman I've met in years. I said I'd try to be your friend, if you'd let me." Impulsively he leaned over and took her hand.

She looked at him and smiled. In the circumstances that might have meant almost anything. It might have meant an invitation. But he dropped her hand as if it burned him, and a dark red tide flowed up to the very edge of his bright hair. "Friends?" she said gently.

"I—I beg your pardon. I meant what I said—and I wasn't thinking..."

"Never mind," she said, the smile deepening into a laugh. "Your risk, you know "

"Yes," he said doggedly, "I do know just what you mean. And you're wrong. I am your friend. And I never loved any woman in my life, and I never expect to. It looks like rot to me—all that sort of thing, and marrying."

"How sensible you are," she said enigmatically, veiling the mischievous spark in her eyes. "I don't see how you knew without trying it. We won't quarrel about it, anyway. Really, really," she laughed again, full-throated, "I assure you nothing could induce me to marry you. I am much more 'set' against it than you. I have the best of reasons." She went off into a burst of merriment that lasted minutes and made her wipe her eyes before she could fairly see him again.

"Oh, go on," he said, putting his hands in his pockets, still rather ruddier than need be, but smiling perforce. "I let myself in for it, all right. Rub it in. But you know perfectly well what I meant. I just didn't want you to imagine I meant to bother you—to be an ass, that way. Just because I like you—and I..."

"Have a few bad habits," she said. "No, really, it is quite all right. I promise, I will never even hint at marrying you." And then they both shouted with laughter.

It was only after he had gone she began to feel like a hypocrite. "He
does
believe himself," she thought, with unspeakable amazement. "And I really am not even his friend. If he never came again, I wouldn't miss him for more than twenty-four hours—well, a week, if no one else came."

"I wasn't thinking," he had said, with a great deal more truth than he dreamed.

And then, at this point in her reflections, Hope pulled off her shoes and threw them across the room with violence, as a slight expression of disgust at herself. Was it possible that she was again flattering herself with that old puerile nonsense about her own importance, and the importance of a moment's fancy of a man for the chance woman? Hadn't she had one quite thorough lesson on that subject? What if he did dig a pit for himself and fall into it? Let him climb out again. It was his own business. "Men had died from time to time, and worms had eaten them, but not for love." What appeared to her as her own monumental conceit toppled and fell on her and she lay meekly prostrate under the ruins.

And, when he did not come the next day, though he had come every day for a week, she made no attempt to extricate herself from that humble position.

But as the rain had stopped, making way for a stretch of glorious Indian summer, and her cough continued, she decided she would go out of town for a day, or over the week end, and look at the sea again, her old medicine of the soul. Mrs. Hassard told her of some hotel with an unpronounceable name in some unget-at-able corner of Staten Island, which she was assured would be at once cheap and quiet now, once the summer was over. She went in search of it.

CHAPTER XXII

LYING full length on the sun-browned, soft grass, among dead soft yellow leaves and flowers contentedly gone to seed, steeped in sun and a happy sense of general uselessness, Hope surveyed the horizon and completed her delight by assuring herself that there was not a soul in sight. If she stood up, she could see the hotel she had just left, but she did not want to stand up, and she had a positive desire not to see the hotel. It was undoubtedly a useful place to leave a suit-case, but little else could be said for it. She had taken but one full breath of its desolation and fled, hours before. A summer hotel when the season is ended, and in mid-week at that, when there is small chance of even the last leaf fluttering in disconsolately, is not a place of cheer.

Before her stretched the sea, with lazy six-inch swells creaming up on a beach of spotless, delicate sand. The Atlantic beaches filled Hope with joy; she had not quite imagined them, after the harsher West Coast fringes. There was a touch of exquisiteness about that white, fine path between sea and shore, as if God had made it with care and pleasure. At her back was but the edge of the down and the sky, and she insisted to her drowsily active imagination that the world ended there. Perhaps someone to help her insist would have been agreeable, but that could be dispensed with. Romance dies hard, she reflected, and smiled, and would have slept, perhaps. But the grass. which had not even been whispering to a breeze, swished and crackled softly; and Hope sat up and looked over her shoulder, ready for annoyed flight. Instead, she sat still, and said:

"Is it you?"

Norris Carter tried to look surprised. He was not a good actor, but he had an uncritical audience.

"Mrs. Angell!" he cried.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Did I follow you here?"

There are disadvantages about being a fair man. But Hope did not notice his colour.

"You couldn't have," he said. "I just happened here; I was over in the next town on business. When did you arrive?"

"When the sun was over there. There is no time here; at least, my watch stopped as soon as I got here."

"Do you mind if I sit down?" He suited the action to the word.

"Not at all. I think I must have wished you up out of nowhere—there was a djinn in a bottle, wasn't there? Perhaps you saw him. We are fated to meet, aren't we?"

"I know I asked you several times before," he said, comfortably rolling a cigarette and unspeakably relieved to find she took his presence so casually, "but haven't we met somewhere, ages ago?"

"Where should you say?"

"I will not quote Henley," he said firmly. "But he may have been right, at that. Because I can't remember where, and I know I have."

"You couldn't possibly remember," she assured him gravely. "I was too young—no, that's not a joke. We did meet."

"Where?" he demanded, almost excitedly.

"You wore a brown Norfolk suit," she went on calmly, "and a green tie with a scarab pin. I didn't know it was a scarab then, and I thought it was rather horrid of you to wear a beetle on your tie. Had you just been to Egypt? You had been growing a moustache, and you'd just shaved it off, your upper lip showed it. I had my hair in curls, and it probably needed combing. I had no shoes. So you wouldn't speak to me, because you were a great big man, and I was a mere, a very mere child. Now do you remember?"

"I was in Egypt, twelve years ago I think; I came back by the Pacific route..."

"I think you were on a hunting trip," she added, watching him with a smile. "And you stayed at my father's house, with two other men. One of them was then the sixth vice president of the C. P. R."

"We stopped—there was a girl there," he said slowly. "But she was grown up; it wasn't you."

"My oldest sister," said Hope, laughing. "We look a bit alike, but we aren't. She is a respectable married woman, and I am a gipsy. Don't you remember me at all?" She looked mockingly mournful. "A little, scared, homely girl in a corner."

"There was a little girl," he said. "It was you!" This as if some rare phenomenon had been presented to him.

"Kittens make cats; little girls grow up," she nodded "It is me."

"Good Lord!" he remarked, seemingly overcome.

"Oh, now, it isn't serious," she assured him. "Where are you stopping? Oh. that's where my worldly belongings are checked. But I'm really going to stay out here on the beach.''

"Then I'll have to stay out too," he declared, "and chase away the lions and crabs à
la
Newburg, and things." They laughed as if he had said something witty. "Won't you tell me the rest now?" he asked. "If you were there, why are you here? It's a long way."

"For a little girl with no shoes," she added. He really had been thinking something like that. "All right, if you will tell me about when you were a conquering young hero with a moustache. What do you want to know first?"

"What's your little name?" he demanded.

"It is a little name," she owned. "My name is Hope."

"Hope?" he said, as if expecting her to continue.

"That's all," she said sadly. "Just Hope. It stopped growing when very young. I think I should have been called Despair. That's very subtle of me, isn't it?"

"My name's Norris, you know," he said, "but everyone calls me Nick. That's very subtle too—if your last name's Carter."

"I love silly people," she said solemnly, and they laughed again. "Let's be perfectly silly all afternoon."

They had a whole world to themselves wherein to be as foolish as they chose; and the mere space and sun were enough to raise the spirits of two reasonably healthy young animals to the bubbling point. They rescued old memories from the limbo of forgotten things and told absurd tales of their childhood and adolescence.

"My father is really to blame for my being here," she said, when he later harked back to his question, "He went as far as he could in one direction, and I am only exploring the back trail. I couldn't help it; we have to go and go—the Fieldings. He pursued the wilderness, and I am investigating civilisation. It's wearing work sometimes, and this," she looked about her, "is a relief. The wilderness is gone, so I come down to the sea; the sea doesn't change. Tell me, do you often have such wonderful days as this at this time of year? Is this actually October?" The air was almost languidly warm; it was a rarely perfect day. "I should like to go in swimming," she said idly, and then sat up, the light of daring kindling in her eye. "I
will
go in swimming," she declared. "I have my bathing suit with me."

"The water is cold, really it is," he said. She cast a mildly scornful eye on him; he thought of her previous aspersions concerning his fear of the weather, and capitulated without another word. "I will borrow a bathing suit," he said.

The hotelkeeper looked at him with tolerant contempt, but produced the article; they retained their coats, and went back to the beach.

The water was cold, but intensely invigorating. Hope was not a strong swimmer, but she liked the green depths, the little sparkling waves, the buoyant, yielding, enfolding embrace of the salt water, and struck out steadily seaward, swimming slowly, her wet face upturned to the sun. He stayed at her elbow, with some difficulty restraining his stroke; he swam like a seal. His damp yellow hair glistened, like a lost treasure; she saw that his arms and neck were as tanned as his face; and the gleam of his blue eyes between his spray-beaded lashes was like a reflection of the sky. Esthetically, she admitted, he was very satisfactory; not like some of the poor things she had seen on the beaches, who looked wilted and bleached and miserably exposed, like ill-grown celery untimely brought to the light of day.

She was breathing quickly, and her stroke faltered.

"Shall we turn back?" he asked.

She smiled, and followed his suggestion. And then she realised that the tide was going out; it had borne her farther than she knew, and she could make little headway against it. It drew her slowly, irresistibly, making sport of her will; the slight undertow caught at her feet; the whole great ocean seemed set against her, bent on carrying her far out, beyond sight of the land and all familiar things. She was not terrified, but she felt immensely insignificant, and curiously exalted, as if she were a part of the encompassing flood and for a moment, forgetting that she was not alone, there was a strange temptation to yield herself to the strength of the tide, to go with it as far as it would take her. In a little while longer she would certainly have felt fear, but she had no sensation of sinking yet; she was simply poised between her own efforts and the pull of the tide. Norris spoke in her ear: "Put your hand on my shoulder," He had seen quite clearly that she was powerless. She looked at him quickly, and obeyed. He went ahead in a sudden noiseless spurt, cleaving the water as if it were his native element, making nothing of the drag she must have been to him. She did what she could, but it was not much. Yet it seemed the briefest minute—it was perhaps ten—until she felt the firm sand beneath her feet and stood up, with that heavy languorous feeling of one who has come out of the water to the lighter ether.