The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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She said in a low contemptuous voice: "Better resort to that for your
own sake than do what you are doing to Miss Suydam."

"What am I doing to Miss Suydam?"

"Making love to her."

He sat, eyes idly following the slight swaying motion of her hammock,
the smile still edging his lips.

"Don't worry about Miss Suydam," he said; "she can take care of herself.
What I want to say is this: Once out of mistaken motives--which nobody,
including yourself, would ever credit--I gave you all I had to give--my
name.... It's not much of a name; but I thought you could use it. I was
even fool enough to think--other things. And as usual I succeeded in
injuring where I meant only kindness. Can you believe that?"

"I--think you meant it kindly," she said under her breath. "It was my
fault, Louis. I do not blame you, if you really cared for me. I've told
you so before."

"Yes, but I was ass enough to think _you_ cared for _me_."

She lay in her hammock, looking at him across the crimson-fringed
border.

"There are two ways out of it," he said; "one is divorce. Have you
changed your mind?"

"What is the other?" she asked coldly.

"That--if you could ever learn to care for me--we might try--" He
stopped short.

For two years he had not ventured such a thing to her. The quick, bright
anger warned him from her eyes. But she said quietly: "You know that is
utterly impossible."

"Is it impossible. Shiela?"

"Absolutely. And a trifle offensive."

He said pleasantly: "I was afraid so, but I wanted to be sure. I did not
mean to offend you. People change and mature in two years.... I suppose
you are as angrily impatient of sentiment in a man as you were then."

"I cannot endure it--"

Her voice died out and she blushed furiously as the memory of Hamil
flashed in her mind.

"Shiela," he said quietly, "now and then there's a streak of misguided
decency in me. It cropped out that winter day when I did what I did. And
I suppose it's cropping up now when I ask you, for your own sake, to get
rid of me and give yourself a chance."

"How?"

"Legally."

"I cannot, and you know it."

"You are wrong. Do you think for one moment that your father and mother
would accept the wretched sacrifice you are making of your life if they
knew--"

"The old arguments again," she said impatiently.

"There is a _new_ argument," said Malcourt, staring at her.

"What new argument?"

"Hamil."

Then the vivid colour surged anew from neck to hair, and she rose in the
hammock, bewildered, burning, incensed.

"If it were true," she stammered, leaning on one arm, "do you think me
capable of disgracing my own people?"

"The disgrace will be mine and yours. Is not Hamil worth it?"

"No man is worth any wrong I do to my own family!"

"You are wronging more people than your own, Shiela--"

"It is not true!" she said breathlessly. "There is a nobler happiness
than one secured at the expense of selfishness and ingratitude. I tell
you, as long as I live, I will not have them know or suffer because of
my disgraceful escapade with you! You probably meant well; I must have
been crazy, I think. But we've got to endure the consequences. If
there's unhappiness and pain to be borne, we've got to bear it--we
alone--"

"And Hamil. All three of us."

She looked at him desperately; read in his cool gaze that she could not
deceive him, and remained silent.

"What about Hamil's unhappiness?" repeated Malcourt slowly.

"If--if he has any, he requires no instruction how to bear it."

Malcourt nodded, then, with a weary smile: "I do not plead with you for
my own chance of happiness. Yet, you owe me something, Shiela."

"What?"

"The right to face the world under true colours. You owe me that."

She whitened to the lips. "I know it."

"Suppose I ask for that right?"

"I have always told you that, if you demanded it, I would take your name
openly."

"Yes; but now you admit that you love Hamil."

"Love! Love!" she repeated, exasperated. "What has that got to do with
it? I know what the law of obligation is. You meant to be generous to me
and you ruined your own life. If your future career requires me to
publicly assume your name and a place in your household, I've told you
that I'll pay that debt."

"Very well. When will you pay it?"

She blanched pitifully.

"When you insist, Louis."

"Do you mean you would go out there to the terrace, _now_!--and tell
your mother what you've done?"

"Yes, if I must," she answered faintly.

"In other words, because you think you're in my debt, you stand ready to
acknowledge, on demand, what I gave you--my name?"

Her lips moved in affirmation, but deep in her sickened eyes he saw
terror unspeakable.

"Well," he said, looking away from her, "don't worry, Shiela. I'm not
asking that of you; in fact I don't want it. That's not very
complimentary, but it ought to relieve you.... I'm horribly sorry about
Hamil; I like him; I'd like to do something for him. But if I attempted
anything it would turn out all wrong.... As for you--well, you are
plucky. Poor little girl! I wish I could help you out--short of a
journey to eternity. And perhaps I'll take that before very long," he
added gaily; "I smoke too many cigarettes. Cheer up, Shiela, and send me
a few thousand for Easter."

He rose, gracefully as always, picked up the book from where it lay
tumbled in the netting of the hammock, glanced casually through a page
or two.

Still scanning the print, he said:

"I wanted to give you a chance; I'm going North in a day or two. It
isn't likely we'll meet again very soon.... So I thought I'd speak....
And, if at any time you change your ideas--I won't oppose it."

"Thank you, Louis."

He was running over the pages rapidly now, the same unchanging smile
edging his lips.

"The unexpected sometimes happens, Shiela--particularly when it's
expected. There are ways and ways--particularly when one is tired--too
tired to lie awake and listen any longer, or resist.... My father used
to say that anybody who could use an anaesthetic was the equal of any
graduate physician--"

"Louis! What do you mean?"

But his head was bent again in that curious attitude of listening; and
after a moment he made an almost imperceptible gesture of acquiescence,
and turned to her with the old, easy, half-impudent, half-challenging
air.

"Gray has a butterfly in his collection which shows four distinct forms.
Once people thought these forms were distinct species; now they know
they all are the same species of butterfly in various suits of
disguise--just as you might persuade yourself that unhappiness and
happiness are radically different. But some people find satisfaction in
being unhappy, and some find it in being happy; and as it's all only the
gratification of that imperious egotism we call conscience, the specific
form of all is simply ethical selfishness."

He laughed unrestrainedly at his own will-o'-the-wisp philosophy,
looking very handsome and care-free there where the noon sun slanted
across the white arcade all thick with golden jasmine bloom.

And Shiela, too intelligent to mistake him, smiled a little at his gay
perversity.

* * * * *

He met Portlaw, later, at the Beach Club for luncheon; and, as the
latter looked particularly fat, warm, and worried, Malcourt's perverse
humour remained in the ascendant, and he tormented Portlaw until that
badgered gentleman emitted a bellow of exasperation.

"What on earth's the matter?" asked Malcourt in pretended astonishment.
"I thought I was being funny."

"Funny! Does a man want to be prodded with wit at his own expense when
the market is getting funnier every hour--at his expense? Go and look at
the tape if you want to know why I don't enjoy either your wit or this
accursed luncheon."

"What's happening, Portlaw?"

"I wish you'd tell me."

"Muck-raking?"

"Partly, I suppose."

"Administration?"

"People say so. I don't believe it. There's a rotten lot of gambling
going on. How do I know what's the matter?"

"Perhaps there isn't anything the matter, old fellow."

"Well, there is. I can sniff it 'way down here. And I'm going home to
walk about and listen and sniff some more. Sag, sag, sag!--that's what
the market has been doing for months. Yet, if I sell it short, it
rallies on me and I'm chased to cover. I go long and the thing sags like
the panties on that French count, yonder.... Who's the blond girl with
him?"

"Hope springs eternal in the human beast," observed Malcourt. "Hope is a
bird, Porty, old chap--"

"Hope is a squab," growled Portlaw, swallowing vast quantities of
claret, "all squashy and full of pin-feathers. That's what hope is. It
needs a thorough roasting, and it's getting it."

"Exquisite metaphor," mused Malcourt, gazing affably at the rather blond
girl who crumbled her bread and looked occasionally and blankly at him,
occasionally and affectionately at the French count, her escort, who was
consuming lobster with characteristic Gallic thoroughness and abandon.

"The world," quoted Malcourt, "is so full of a number of things. You're
one of 'em, Portlaw; I'm several.... Well, if you're going North I'd
better begin to get ready."

"What have you got to do?"

"One or two friends of mine who preside in the Temple of Chance yonder.
Oh, don't assume that babyish pout! I've won enough back to keep going
for the balance of the time we remain."

Portlaw, pleased and relieved, finished his claret.

"You've a few ladies to take leave of, also," he said briskly.

"Really, Portlaw!"--in gentle admonition.

"Haw! Haw!" roared Portlaw, startling the entire cafe; "you'd better get
busy. There'll be a run on the bank. There'll be a waiting line before
Malcourt & Co. opens for business, each fair penitent with her little
I.O.U. to be cashed! Haw! Haw! Sad dog! Bad dog! The many-sided
Malcourt! Come on; I've got a motor across the--"

"And I've an appointment with several superfluous people and a girl,"
said Malcourt drily. Then he glanced at the blond companion of the count
who continued crumbling bread between her brilliantly ringed fingers as
though she had never before seen Louis Malcourt. The price of diamonds
varies. Sometimes it is merely fastidious observance of convention and a
sensitive escort. It all depends on the world one inhabits; it does
indeed.

CHAPTER XIV

STRATEGY

An hour or two later that afternoon Wayward and Constance Palliser,
Gussie Vetchen, and Livingston Cuyp gazed with variously mingled
sentiments upon the torpid saurians belonging to one Alligator Joe in an
enclosure rather remote from the hotel.

Vetchen bestowed largess upon the small, freckled boy attendant; and his
distinguished disapproval upon the largest lady-crocodile which, with
interlocked but grinning jaws, slumbered under a vertical sun in
monochromatic majesty.

"One perpetual and gigantic simper," he said, disgusted.

"Rather undignified for a thing as big as that to lay eggs like a hen,"
observed Cuyp, not intending to be funny.

Wayward and Miss Palliser had wandered off together to inspect the
pumps. Vetchen, always inquisitive, had discovered a coy manatee in one
tank, and was all for poking it with his walking-stick until he saw its
preposterous countenance emerge from the water.

"Great heavens," he faltered, "it looks like a Dutch ancestor of
Cuyp's!"

Cuyp, intensely annoyed, glanced at his watch.

"Where the mischief did Miss Suydam and Malcourt go?" he asked Wayward.
"I say, Miss Palliser, you don't want to wait here any longer, do you?"

"They're somewhere in the labyrinth," said Wayward. "Their chair went
that way, didn't it, boy?"

"Yeth, thir," said the small and freckled attendant.

So the party descended the wooden incline to where their sleepy black
chairmen lay on the grass, waiting; and presently the two double chairs
wheeled away toward that amusing maze of jungle pathways cut through the
impenetrable hammock, and popularly known as the labyrinth.

But Miss Suydam and Mr. Malcourt were not in the labyrinth. At that very
moment they were slowly strolling along the eastern dunes where the vast
solitude of sky and sea seemed to depress even the single white-headed
eagle standing on the wet beach, head and tail adroop, motionless,
fish-gorged. No other living thing was in sight except the slim, blue
dragon-flies, ceaselessly darting among the beach-grapes; nothing else
stirred except those two figures on the dunes, moving slowly, heads bent
as though considering the advisability of every step in the breaking
sands. There was a fixed smile on the girl's lips, but her eyes were
mirthless, almost vacant.

"So you've decided to go?" she said.

"Portlaw decides that sort of thing for me."

"It's a case of necessity?"

Malcourt answered lightly: "He intends to go. Who can stop a fat and
determined man? Besides, the season is over; in two weeks there will be
nobody left except the indigenous nigger, the buzzards, and a few
cast-off summer garments--"

"And a few cast-off winter memories," she said. "You will not take any
away with you, will you?"

"Do you mean clothes?"

"Memories."

"I'll take some."

"Which?"

"All those concerning you."

"Thank you, Louis." They had got that far. And a trifle farther, for her
hand, swinging next his, encountered it and their fingers remained
interlocked. But there was no change of expression in her pretty, pale
face as, head bent, shoulder to shoulder with him, she moved
thoughtfully onward along the dunes, the fixed smile stamped on her
lips.

"What are you going to do with your memories?" she asked. "Pigeon-hole
and label them? Or fling them, like your winter repentance, in the Fire
of Spring?"

"What are you going to do with yours, Virginia?"

"Nothing. They are not disturbing enough to destroy. Besides, unlike
yours, they are my first memories of indiscretions, and they are too new
to forget easily, too incredible yet to hurt. A woman is seldom hurt by
what she cannot understand."

He passed one arm around her supple waist; they halted; he turned her
toward him.

"What is it you don't understand?"

"This."

"My kissing you? Like this?"

She neither avoided nor returned the caress, looking at him out of
impenetrable eyes more green than blue like the deep sea under changing
skies.

"Is this what you don't understand, Virginia?"

"Yes; that--and your moderation."

His smile changed, but it was still a smile.

"Nor I," he said. "Like our friend, Warren Hastings, I am astonished.
But there our resemblance ends."

The eagle on the wet sands ruffled, shook his silvery hackles, and
looked around at them. Then, head low and thrust forward, he hulked
slowly toward the remains of the dead fish from which but now he had
retired in the disgust of satiation.

Meanwhile Malcourt and Miss Suydam were walking cautiously forward
again, selecting every footstep as though treading on the crumbling
edges of an abyss.

"It's rather stupid that I never suspected it," she said, musing aloud.

"Suspected what?"

"The existence of this other woman called Virginia Suydam. And I might
have been mercifully ignorant of her until I died, if you had not looked
at me and seen us both at once."

"We all are that way."

"Not all women, Louis. Have you found them so? You need not answer.
There is in you, sometimes, a flash of infernal chivalry; do you know
it? I can forgive you a great deal for it; even for discovering that
other and not very staid person, so easily schooled, easily taught to
respond; so easily thrilled, easily beguiled, easily caressed. Why, with
her head falling back on your shoulder so readily, and her lips so
lightly persuaded, one can scarcely believe her to have been untaught
through all these years of dry convention and routine, or unaware of
that depravity, latent, which it took your unerring faith and skill to
discover and develop."

"How far have I developed it?"

She bent her delicate head: "I believe I have already admitted your
moderation."

He shivered, walking forward without looking at her for a pace or two,
then halted.

"Would you marry me?" he asked.

"I had rather not. You know it."

"Why?--once again."

"Because of my strange respect for that other woman that I am--or was."

"Which always makes me regret my--moderation," he said, wincing under
the lash of her words. "But I'm not considering you! I'm considering the
peace of mind of that other woman--not yours!" He took her in his arms,
none too gently. "Not yours. I'd show no mercy to _you_\ There is only
one kind of mercy you'd understand. Look into my eyes and admit it."

"Yes," she said.

"But your other self understands!"

"Why don't you destroy her?"

"And let her die in her contempt for me? You ask too
much--Virginia-that-I-know. If that other Virginia-that-I-don't-know
loved me, I'd kill _this_ one, not the other!"

"Do you care for that one, Louis?"

"What answer shall I make?"

"The best you can without lying."

"Then"--and being in his arms their eyes were close--"then I think I
could love her if I had a chance. I don't know. I can deny myself. They
say that is the beginning. But I seldom do--very seldom. And that is the
best answer I can give, and the truest."

"Thank you.... And so you are going to leave me?"

"I am going North. Yes."

"What am I to do?"

"Return to your other self and forget me."

"Thank you again.... Do you know, Louis, that you have never once by
hint or by look or by silence suggested that it was I who deliberately
offered you the first provocation? That is another flicker of that
infernal chivalry of yours."

"Does your other self approve?" he said, laughing.

"My other self is watching us both very closely, Louis. I--I wish,
sometimes, she were dead! Louis! Louis! as I am now, here in your arms,
I thought I had descended sufficiently to meet you on your own plane.
But--you seem higher up--at moments.... And now, when you are going, you
tell my other self to call in the creature we let loose together, for it
will have no longer any counterpart to caress.... Louis! I _do_ love
you; how can I let you go! Can you tell me? What am I to do? There are
times--there are moments when I cannot endure it--the thought of losing
the disgrace of your lips--your arms--the sound of your voice. Don't go
and leave me like this--don't go--"

Miss Suydam's head fell. She was crying.

* * * * *

The eagle on the wet beach, one yellow talon firmly planted on its
offal, tore strip after strip from the quivering mass. The sun etched
his tinted shadow on the sand.

When the tears of Miss Suydam had been appropriately dried, they turned
and retraced their steps very slowly, her head resting against his
shoulder, his arm around her thin waist, her own hand hanging loosely,
trailing the big straw hat and floating veil.

They spoke very seldom--very, very seldom. Malcourt was too busy
thinking; Virginia too stunned to realise that, it was, now, her other
austere self, bewildered, humiliated, desperate, which was walking amid
the solitude of sky and sea with Louis Malcourt, there beneath the
splendour of the westering sun.

The eagle, undisturbed, tore at the dead thing on the beach, one yellow
talon embedded in the offal.

Their black chair-boy lay asleep under a thicket of Spanish bayonet.

"Arise, O Ethiope, and make ready unto us a chariot!" said Malcourt
pleasantly; and he guided Virginia into her seat while the fat darky
climbed up behind, rubbing slumber from his rolling and enormous eyes.

Half-way through the labyrinth they met Miss Palliser and Wayward.

"Where on earth have you been?" asked Virginia, so candidly that
Wayward, taken aback, began excuses. But Constance Palliser's cheeks
turned pink; and remained so during her silent ride home with Wayward.

Lately the world had not been spinning to suit the taste of Constance
Palliser. For one thing Wayward was morose. Besides he appeared
physically ill. She shrank from asking herself the reason; she might
better have asked him for her peace of mind.

Another matter: Virginia, the circumspect, the caste-bound, the
intolerant, the emotionless, was displaying the astounding symptoms
peculiar to the minx! And she had neither the excuse of ignorance nor of
extreme youth. Virginia was a mature maiden, calmly cognisant of the
world, and coolly alive to the doubtful phases of that planet. And why
on earth she chose to affiche herself with a man like Malcourt,
Constance could not comprehend.

And another thing worried the pretty spinster--the comings, goings, and
occult doings of her nephew with the most distractingly lovely and
utterly impossible girl that fate ever designed to harass the soul of
any young man's aunt.

That Hamil was already in love with Shiela Cardross had become painfully
plainer to her every time she saw him. True, others were in love with
Miss Cardross; that state of mind and heart seemed to be chronic at Palm
Beach. Gussie Vetchen openly admitted his distinguished consideration,
and Courtlandt Classon toddled busily about Shiela's court, and even the
forlorn Cuyp had become disgustingly unfaithful and no longer wrinkled
his long Dutch nose into a series of white corrugations when Wayward
took Miss Palliser away from him. Alas! the entire male world seemed to
trot in the wake of this sweet-eyed young Circe, emitting appealingly
gentle and propitiating grunts.

"The very deuce is in that girl!" thought Constance, exasperated; "and
the sooner Garry goes North the better. He's madly unhappy over her....
Fascinating little thing! _I_ can't blame him too much--except that he
evidently realises he can't marry such a person--"

The chair rolled into the hotel grounds under the arch of jasmine. The
orchestra was playing in the colonnade; tea had been served under the
cocoa-nut palms; pretty faces and gay toilets glimmered familiarly as
the chair swept along the edge of the throng.

"Tell the chair-boy that we'll tea here, Jim," said Miss Palliser,
catching sight of her nephew and the guilty Circe under whose gentle
thrall Hamil was now boldly imbibing a swizzle.

So Wayward nodded to the charioteer, the chair halted, and he and
Constance disembarked and advanced across the grass to exchange
amenities with friends and acquaintances. Which formalities always
fretted Wayward, and he stood about, morose and ungracious, while
Constance floated prettily here and there, and at last turned with
nicely prepared surprise to encounter Shiela and Hamil seated just
behind her.

The younger girl, rising, met her more than half-way with gloved hand
frankly offered; Wayward turned to Hamil in subdued relief.

"Lord! I've been looking at those confounded alligators and listening to
Vetchen's and Cuyp's twaddle! Constance wouldn't talk; and I'm quite
unfit for print. What's that in your glass, Garry?"

"A swizzle--"

"Anything in it except lime-juice and buzz?"

"Yes--"

"Then I won't have one. Constance! Are you drinking tea?"

"Do you want some?" she asked, surprised.

"Yes, I do--if you can give me some without asking how many lumps I
take--like the inevitable heroine in a British work of fiction--"

"Jim, what a bear you are to-day!" And to Shiela, who was laughing: "He
snapped and growled at Gussie Vetchen and he glared and glowered at
Livingston Cuyp, and he's scarcely vouchsafed a word to me this
afternoon except the civility you have just heard. Jim, I _will_ ask you
how many lumps--"

"O Lord! Britain triumphant! Two--I think; ten if you wish,
Constance--or none at all. Miss Cardross, you wouldn't say such things
to me, would you?"

"Don't answer him," interposed Constance; "if you do you'll take him
away, and I haven't another man left! Why are you such a dreadful
devastator, Miss Cardross?... Here's your tea, James. Please turn around
and occupy yourself with my nephew; I'd like a chance to talk to Miss
Cardross."

The girl had seated herself beside Miss Palliser, and, as Wayward moved
over to the other table, she gave him a perverse glance, so humourous
and so wholly adorable that Constance Palliser yielded to the charm with
an amused sigh of resignation.

"My dear," she said, "Miss Suydam and I are going North very soon, and
we are coming to see your mother at the first opportunity."

"Mother expects you," said the girl simply. "I did not know that she
knew Miss Suydam--or cared to."

Something in the gentle indifference of the words sent the conscious
blood pulsing into Miss Palliser's cheeks. Then she said frankly:

"Has Virginia been rude to you?"

"Yes--a little."

"Unpardonably?"

"N-no. I always can pardon."

"You dear!" said Constance impulsively. "Listen; Virginia does snippy
things at times. I don't know why and she doesn't either. I know she's
sorry she was rude to you, but she seems to think her rudeness too
utterly unpardonable. May I tell her it isn't?"

"If you please," said Shiela quietly.

Miss Palliser looked at her, then, succumbing, took her hand in hers.

"No wonder people like you, Miss Cardross."

"Do _you_?"

"How could I escape the popular craze?" laughed Miss Palliser, a trifle
embarrassed.

"That is not an answer," returned Shiela, the smile on her red lips
faintly wistful. And Constance surrendered completely.

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