The Last Drive (23 page)

“Did they annoy you?” demanded Canby in the tone of a protector.

“No; they never do. Of course, they often speak to me, on the street too, but that's all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I look as if I didn't understand them and say something in Italian or French. They always look frightened and go away. Americans are so afraid of a foreign tongue.”

“You speak Italian and French?”

“Yes. My mother was French; she was born in Paris. But, my goodness!”—she laughed a little for the first time, a low soft ripple of sound that enchanted the ear—“I tell all about myself, don't I?
Parlons un peu à votre sujet, monsieur.
”

Canby protested that the topic would be unutterably dull, and a moment later found himself somehow involved in a discussion of neckties, how started he could not have told. It appeared that Nella Somi favored black and gray, because none of the gayer colors went well with the coarse complexion of the male; and she particularly disliked such shades as orange and green. Canby remembered that a green four-in-hand was at the moment around his neck, and he felt uncomfortable. They talked on various subjects, and finally arrived at tennis. Miss Somi had spent her two preceding vacations at a girls' colony on Long Island, where they had played daily, and Canby proposed a set.

He found racquets and balls, and sport shoes of his sister's for Miss Somi, and together they walked to the courts, at the foot of the north terrace near the lake. Canby was so interested in watching his opponent that he forgot everything else until he heard her call, “Fifty-love,” and then he set to it in earnest; and though he lost the game he succeeded in carrying it to deuce. After that he stopped trying.

The girl's movements, incredibly quick and graceful, charmed him by their appeal to his feeling for the beautiful; she was Diana and the racquet was her bow. The red lips parted and the white teeth flashed as she called the score; her flushed cheeks made her more lovely than ever; and once, at the net, in the middle of the fourth game, her blue eyes sparkled directly into his, and he stood there stupidly as the ball whizzed past his shoulder.

The girl tossed her racquet on the ground.

“You're not trying, and I won't play any more,” she declared. “I'm tired, anyway. I wonder where Rose and Mildred are.”

He picked up the racquet and followed her to the piazza, where they found the others returned from the garden. It was nearly dinnertime, and they entered the house. Half an hour later at the table, Canby found that Miss Somi's loquacity had entirely disappeared. She did not look directly at him once during the meal.

The conversation turned for the most part on flowers, for Rose and Mildred were full of enthusiasm over the gardens. Such wonderful blossoms and so many they had never seen before! One of the gardeners had kindly told them the names of the plants. His name was Jensen, and they thought him a very nice man. Tomorrow he was going to show them how the water was forced into the fountain, and some Italian bulbs he had in the greenhouses.

After dinner Canby proposed an alternative: would they go motoring, or take a walk down by the river? Miss Somi professed indifference; the others, after a sustained discussion in their native tongue, declared for the river. Before they started, Canby telephoned to the Waring home, and was told that Mrs. Waring was much better and that his sister would return home that evening. Then, after sending a maid for wraps for the girls, for it was nighttime now and quite cool, Canby led the way along one of the broad paths leading to the rear of the park. Miss Somi was beside him, and Rose and Mildred, chattering in Italian, were at their heels.

There was a bright full moon and the stars were thick in the heavens; so that, though it was quite dark in the shadows of the grove, when they emerged on to the riverbank there was a shimmering track of light on the rippling water and a silvery radiance was everywhere. The bluffs of the opposite shore rose black and indistinct, and had the appearance of being at a great distance in the soft mysterious light; and the noises of the night, the cry of an owl somewhere in the trees, the chug of a motor boat far up the river, and, more faintly, the lapping of the water on the bank, came to them with the evening breeze, and when they spoke their voices were lowered as if in fear of disturbing the fairy scene. They wandered a space along the bank, speaking a little, and then, reaching the boathouse, Canby proposed a row. Out on the water it was quite cool and the girls drew their wraps about their shoulders. Canby pulled across to the opposite shore and a half mile or so upstream, then crossed back over and floated down with the current.

“It was such a nice ride!” declared Mildred Lavicci a little shyly, as they landed at the boathouse.

Rose agreed, and added something about Mr. Canby being so kind, not a bit like a rich man. Nella Somi said nothing.

They strolled slowly back up the bank, the bright moonlight throwing their grotesque shadows across the water's edge. From the direction of the house came the sound of a motor car on the driveway.

“That's my sister, Mrs. Haskins,” Canby informed Nella Somi at his side. “If she wants to know how I've substituted in her absence, I hope you'll give a good account of me. Remember, I let you beat me at tennis!”

“Yes, but I could have won anyway,” retorted the girl with a little defiant toss of the head. “I didn't half try, you know.”

The other two had moved on ahead and had now stopped to wait for them at the beginning of the path leading into the park. When Canby and Miss Somi came up they stood there a time looking out over the water. Then Rose and Mildred turned into the path, and the others slowly followed at a distance.

All at once, just before they reached the enveloping shadow of the trees, Canby was aware of a sudden startled movement from the girl at his side. Then she stood stiff, as though paralyzed, with her gaze fastened on the ground ten feet ahead; and, following the direction of her eyes, Canby saw a large black water-snake basking in the moonlight with its beady eyes glittering like diamonds.

“No danger,” he reassured her, “it's just a—”

At that moment the snake moved swiftly toward them, and he was interrupted by a cry of fear from the girl. She turned, and he saw her eyes filled with terror, and, the next thing he knew, his arms were around her protectingly, while she clung to him closely, like a frightened child.

“Where is it, where is it?” she cried, while he soothed her:

“Really, it won't hurt you; really, it's quite harmless! It's only—”

There were footsteps on the gravel walk, and a voice suddenly sounded:

“Well, Fred!”

Canby looked up and saw his sister standing there, regarding the chivalrous scene with an expression decidedly ironic. Feeling rather foolish, he loosened his arms, and Miss Somi swiftly drew away.

“Hello, Janet!” he returned calmly. “Back already? This is Miss Nella Somi. We just saw a snake.”

II

Later that night Canby motored back to Greenhedge, his own estate, fifteen miles distant, where he found his friend Garrett Linwood mixing gin fizzes in pairs to while the hours away during the absence of his host. Linwood was a retired broker and capitalist, a widower a little over fifty, with an immense fortune and one aim left in life: to go around the Wanakahnda course in less than eighty. That was why he was at Greenhedge now; the Wanakahnda Country Club was distant only a ten-minute drive. He met Canby with the information that he had that day got a four on the long ninth and a three on the seventeenth.

The next morning they played the postponed match; then, leaving Linwood at the links, Canby jumped into his roadster and half an hour later, at Roselawn, announced to his surprised sister that he had come for lunch. He spent the afternoon on the tennis court with Miss Nella Somi of the East Side Vacation Club; he had the firm intention of inviting himself to dinner, but changed his mind when he learned that several guests were expected from neighboring estates.

During the week that followed Garrett Linwood was considerably mystified by the peculiar conduct of his friend Canby. That gentleman became suddenly most unreliable; he would disappear unexpectedly and turn up again several hours later without any explanation; he actually seemed to have taken a dislike to golf! Linwood couldn't understand it.

As a matter of fact, Canby didn't understand it himself. In his reflections, of which there were many during this eventful week, he hotly denied the possibility of his becoming enamored, at the age of forty-one years, of a nineteen-year-old child. So he called her: child. He played tennis with her, he took her motoring and motor-boating, he sat with her for hours at a time in the gardens or on the piazza of Roselawn, listening to her prattle and looking at her. Mostly he looked at her; the delight of it was never-ending, for her beauty was of the kind that could withstand long inspection and the fierce rays of the sun and the flushed cheeks of exertion; and not only withstand these things, but profit by them. He enjoyed hearing her talk almost as much as looking at her; her queer turns of expression, her simple, frank philosophy of the working-girl, her innocent delight in the luxuries of wealth as exhibited at Roselawn, even her occasional moody silences, when nothing would get a word from her.

There were occasional broad lapses from what Canby's world considered good form, but they merely served to amuse him and attract him the more by their piquancy, especially as there was never any touch of vulgarity in anything she did; her gestures, her tones, her dress—none was ever in the slightest degree offensive. She seemed of different mould from the Italian peasant girls.

One night, without being questioned, she spoke of her parentage. Her mother had been a French actress; her father, a Hungarian office-holder. Both had been dead some years, and Nella, left practically penniless, had come to America at the age of fourteen; so far as she knew she had not a relative in the world. Her father she remembered scarcely at all, but her mother had been very beautiful.

The attitude—or attitudes, for there were many of them—which she assumed toward Canby interested and piqued him. She would ask him scores of questions on some subject—the theatre, for instance, or the great hotels of the world capitals—and hang with delightful breathless attention on his words, like a curious child; and the next moment she would snub him on no provocation whatever and subtly withdraw herself. She never alluded to the incident of the snake and the moment she had been held in his arms; neither did Canby, but it was often in his mind. They were together hours of every day; though when they went motoring or out on the river Canby would take the Italian girls along for the sake of appearances. Telling himself that it was absurd for a man of his age to use formal address with a young girl in her teens, he called her by her first name, and she made no objection. Thus the days flew by until only one remained of their two-weeks vacation.

“So you return to New York tomorrow,” Canby was saying. It was an hour after lunch and they were together in the garden, strolling aimlessly about from one shady spot to another; the day was too hot for tennis. Over near the fountain, some distance away, Rose and Mildred were seated on a bench with their hostess, who was reading aloud from a novel.

The girl, who had been in one of her silent moods since luncheon, nodded without speaking. She was dressed in white from head to foot—linen dress and canvas shoes—and, bareheaded, carried a blue parasol. The blue eyes did not sparkle with their usual life; they were serious, even a little sombre, as she bent them on the path before her.

“I'm sorry you're going,” Canby continued, “deeply sorry. I've enjoyed your visit immensely.”

Still she was silent; but presently she sent him a quick glance, then looked away again before she spoke:

“You've been very kind to me—to all of us. And—something else. After the first day I thought you liked me; that is, I thought you were interested in me—that I—I pleased you. And I was a little—not afraid, but disturbed, because I know how rich men treat poor girls. So I want to thank you for not being—for being nice to me.”

“Good heavens, you needn't thank me for not being a brute!” Canby exclaimed.

“I do, anyway.” Suddenly she looked up at him and laughed. “You wouldn't have been much to blame—would you?—after the way I acted that night when I saw the snake.”

“You were frightened,” said Canby gruffly.

“Yes. Ugh, I hate them so, and fear them! But I really believe I threw my arms around you, didn't I?”

“You did.”

“How funny! I never did that before to any man; but then, of course, you're so old.”

“Of course,” he agreed without enthusiasm.

“Well, it's all over now. Tomorrow I go back to that smelly flat and the sorting-room and standing up all day long and Mr. Horo­witz who shouts at you. … But it's fun, anyway, to work. I really don't mind it, only it gets tiresome, and there are so many beautiful things you can't have.”

“And to Tony,” came from Canby.

“What—to Tony?”

“You go back to Tony.”

“Oh!” She laughed and he caught a flash from her eyes. “I'd forgotten all about him.
Tant mieux!
But he'll begin to make love to me again, I suppose.”

A little later they joined the others near the fountain, and were greeted with short nods, for page 280 of the novel had just been reached and things were exciting. Nella Somi sat down to listen, and Canby, feeling restless, wandered aimlessly about the paths. He had a project in mind and he was impatient to set it afoot.

He was not over-satisfied with himself. He had been astonished and enraged that morning to find three gray hairs in his head; and the discovery was singularly inopportune, inasmuch as his friend Garrett Linwood had been congratulating him only the evening before on the preservation of his youth. He reflected somewhat pityingly that Linwood himself was really getting quite old; a few years more now and he would be sixty. Three score! By comparison with that patriarchal figure he, Canby, was highly jejune. Something within him whispered, “Still youthful enough to be a fool, and too old to enjoy your folly.”