The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"You will never--see me--again. Is that what 'nothing' means?"

They walked on in silence. The path had now become palely illumined; the
sound of the surf was very near. Another step or two and they stood on
the forest's edge.

A spectral ocean stretched away under the stars; ghostly rollers
thundered along the sands. North and south dunes glimmered; and the hot
fragrance of sweet-bay mingled with the mounting savour of the sea.

She looked at the sea, the stars, blindly, lips apart, teeth closed, her
arm still resting on his.

"Nothing," she repeated under her breath; "that was the best answer....
Don't touch my hand!... I was mad to come here.... How close and hot it
is! What is that new odour--so fresh and sweet--"

"China-berry in bloom--"

"Is it?"

"I'm not sure; once I thought it was--you; the fragrance of your hair
and breath--Calypso."

"When did you think that?"

"Our first night together."

She said: "I think this is our last."

He stood for a while, motionless; slowly raised his head and looked
straight into her eyes; took her in his arms; holding her loosely.

White of cheek and lip, rigid, her eyes met his in breathless suspense.
Fear widened them; her hands tightened on his wrists behind her.

"Will you love me?"

"No!" she gasped.

"Is there no chance?"

"No!"

Her heart was running riot; every pulse in rebellion. A cloud possessed
her senses, through which her eyes fought desperately for sight.

"Give me a memory--to carry through the years," he said unsteadily.

"No."

"Not one?"

"No!"

"To help us endure?"

Suddenly she turned in his arms, covering her eyes with both hands.

"Take--what--you wish--" she panted.

He touched one slim rigid finger after another, but they clung fast to
the pallid face. Time and space reeled through silence. Then slowly,
lids still sealed with desperate white hands, her head sank backward.

Untaught, her lips yielded coldly; but the body, stunned, swayed toward
him as he released her; and, his arm supporting her, they turned blindly
toward the path. Without power, without will, passive, dependent on his
strength, her trembling knees almost failed her. She seemed unconscious
of his lips on her cheek, on her hair--of her cold hands crushed in his,
of the words he uttered--senseless, broken phrases, questions to which
her silence answered and her closed lids acquiesced. If love was what he
was asking for, why did he ask? He had his will of her lips, her hair,
her slim fragrant hands; and now of her tears--for the lashes were wet
and the mouth trembled. Her mind was slowly awaking to pain.

With it, far within her in unknown depths, something else stirred,
stilling her swelling heart. Then every vein in her grew warm; and the
quick tears sprang to her eyes.

"Dearest--dearest--" he whispered. Through the dim star-pallor she
turned toward him, halted, passing her finger-tips across her lashes.

"After all," she said, "it was too late. If there is any sin in loving
you it happened long ago--not to-night.... It began from the--the
beginning. Does the touch of your lips make me any worse?... But I am
not afraid--if you wish it--now that I know I always loved you."

"Shiela! Shiela, little sweetheart--"

"I love you so--I love you so," she said. "I cannot help it any more
than I could in dreams--any more than I could when we met in the sea and
the fog.... Should I lie to myself and you? I know I can never have you
for mine; I know--I know. But if you will be near me when you can--if
you will only be near--sometimes--"

She pressed both his hands close between hers.

"Dear--can you give up your freedom for a girl you cannot have?"

"I did so long since."

She bent and laid her lips on his hands, gravely.

"I must say something--that disturbs me a little. May I? Then, there are
perils--warnings--veiled hints.... They mean nothing definite to me....
Should I be wiser?... It is difficult to say--senseless--showing my
ignorance, but I thought if there were perils that I should know
about--that could possibly concern me, now, you would tell me,
somehow--in time--"

For a moment the revelation of her faith and innocence--the disclosure
of how strange and lost she felt in the overwhelming catastrophe of
forbidden love--how ignorant, how alone, left him without a word to
utter.

She said, still looking down at his hands held between her own:

"A girl who has done what I have done, loses her bearings.... I don't
know yet how desperately bad I am. However, one thing remains
clear--only one--that no harm could come to--my family--even if I have
given myself to you. And when I did it, only the cowardly idea that I
was wronging myself persisted. If that is my only sin--you are worth it.
And if I committed worse--I am not repentant. But--dear, what you have
done to me has so utterly changed me that--things that I never before
heeded or comprehended trouble me. Yesterday I could not have
understood what to-night I have done. So, if there lies any unknown
peril in to-morrow, or the days to come--if you love me you will tell
me.... Yet I cannot believe in it. Dearly as I love you I would not
raise one finger to comfort you at _their_ expense. I would not go away
with you; I would not seek my freedom for your sake. If there is in my
love anything base or selfish I am not conscious of it. I cannot marry
you; I can only live on, loving you. What danger can there be in that
for you and me?"

"None," he said.

She sighed happily, lifted her eyes, yielded to his arms, sighing her
heart out, lips against his.

Somewhere in the forest a bird awoke singing like a soul in Paradise.

CHAPTER XVI

AN ULTIMATUM

With the beginning of March the end of the so-called social season,
south of Jupiter Light, is close at hand. First, the great winter hotels
close; then, one by one, doors and gates of villa and cottage are
locked, bright awnings and lawn shades furled and laid away, blinds
bolted, flags lowered. All summer long villa and caravansary alike stand
sealed and silent amid their gardens, blazing under the pale fierce
splendour of an unclouded sky; tenantless, save where, beside opened
doors of quarters, black recumbent figures sprawl asleep, shiny faces
fairly sizzling in the rays of a vertical sun.

The row of shops facing the gardens, the white streets, quay, pier,
wharf are deserted and silent. Rarely a human being passes; the sands
are abandoned except by some stray beach-comber; only at the station
remains any sign of life where trains are being loaded for the North, or
roll in across the long draw-bridge, steaming south to that magic port
from which the white P. and O. steamers sail away into regions of
eternal sunshine.

So passes Palm Beach into its long summer sleep; and the haunts of men
are desolate. But it is otherwise with the Wild.

Night and the March moon awake the winter-dormant wilderness from the
white man's deadening spell. Now, unrestrained, the sound of negro
singing floats inland on the sea-wind from inlet, bar, and glassy-still
lagoon; great, cumbersome, shadowy things lumber down to tidewater--huge
turtles on egg-laying intent. In the dune-hammock the black bear,
crab-hungry, awakes from his December sleep and claws the palmetto
fruit; the bay lynx steals beachward; a dozen little deaths hatch from
the diamond-back, alive; and the mean gray fox uncurls and scratches
ticks, grinning, red-gummed, at the moon.

Edging the Everglades, flat-flanked panthers prowl, ears and tail-tips
twitching; doe and buck listen from the cypress shades; the razor-back
clatters his tusks, and his dull and furry ears stand forward and his
dull eyes redden. Then the silver mullet leap in the moonlight, and the
tiger-owl floats soundlessly to his plunging perch, and his daring
yellow glare flashes even when an otter splashes or a tiny fawn stirs.

And very, very far away, under the stars, rolls the dull bull-bellow of
the 'gator, labouring, lumbering, clawing across the saw-grass seas; and
all the little striped pigs run, bucking madly, to their dangerous and
silent dam who listens, rigid, horny nose aquiver in the wind.

So wakes the Wild when the white men turn northward under the March
moon; and, as though released from the same occult restraint, tree and
shrub break out at last into riotous florescence: swamp maple sets the
cypress shade afire; the cassava lights its orange elf-lamps; dogwood
snows in the woods; every magnolia is set with great white chalices
divinely scented, and the Royal Poinciana crowns itself with cardinal
magnificence.

All day long brilliant butterflies hover on great curved wings over the
jungle edge; all day long the cock-quail whistles from wall and hedge,
and the crestless jays, sapphire winged, flit across the dunes.
Red-bellied woodpeckers gossip in live-oak, sweet-gum, and ancient palm;
gray squirrels chatter from pine to bitter-nut; the iridescent little
ground-doves, mated for life, run fearlessly under foot or leap up into
snapping flight with a flash of saffron-tinted wings. Under the
mangroves the pink ajajas preen and wade; and the white ibis walks the
woods like a little absent-minded ghost buried in unearthly reverie.

Truly when madam closes her Villa Tillandsia, and when Coquina Court is
bereft of mistress and household--butler, footman, maid, and flunky; and
when Tsa-na Lah-ni is abandoned by its handsome chatelaine, and the
corridors of the vast hotels are dark, it is fashion, not common sense
that stirs the flock of gaily gregarious immigrants into premature
northern flight; for they go, alas! just as the southland clothes itself
in beauty, and are already gone when the Poinciana opens, leaving
Paradise to blossom for the lesser brothers of the woodland and the
dark-skinned children of the sun.

* * * * *

The toddling Moses of the Exodus, as usual, was Courtlandt Classon; the
ornamental Miriam, Mrs. O'Hara; and the children of the preferred stock
started North with cymbals and with dances, making a joyful noise, and
camping en route at Ormond--vastly more beautiful than the
fashion-infested coral reef from which they started--at Saint Augustine,
on corporate compulsion, at the great inns of Hampton, Hot Springs, and
Old Point, for fashion's sake--taking their falling temperature by
degrees--as though any tropic could compare with the scorching
suffocation of Manhattan town.

Before the Beach Club closed certain species of humanity left in a body,
including a number of the unfledged, and one or two pretty opportunists.
Portlaw went, also Malcourt.

It required impudence, optimism, and executive ability for Malcourt to
make his separate adieux and render impartial justice on each occasion.

There was a girl at "The Breakers" who was rather apt to slop over, so
that interview was timed for noon, when the sun dries up everything very
quickly, including such by-products as tears.

Then there was Miss Suydani to ride with at five o'clock on the beach,
where the chain of destruction linked mullet and osprey and ended with
the robber eagle--and Malcourt--if he chose.

But here there were no tears for the westering sun to dry, only
strangely quenched eyes, more green than blue, for Malcourt to study,
furtively; only the pale oval of a face to examine, curiously, and not
too cynically; and a mouth, somewhat colourless, to reassure without
conviction--also without self-conviction. This was all--except a pair of
slim, clinging hands to release when the time came, using
discretion--and some amiable firmness if required.

They were discussing the passing of the old regime, for lack of a safer
theme; and he had spoken flippantly of the decadence of the old
families--his arm around her and her pale cheek against his shoulder.

She listened rather absently; her heart was very full and she was
thinking of other matters. But as he continued she answered at length,
hesitating, using phrases as trite and quaintly stilted as the theme
itself, gently defending the old names he sneered at. And in her words
he savoured a certain old-time flavour of primness and pride--a vaguely
delicate hint of resentment, which it amused him to excite. Pacing the
dunes with her waist enlaced, he said, to incite retort:

"The old families are done for. Decadent in morals, in physique, mean
mentally and spiritually, they are even worse off than respectfully
cherished ruins, because they are out of fashion; they and their dingy
dwellings. Our house is on the market; I'd be glad to see it sold only
Tressilvain will get half."

"In you," she said, "there seems to be other things, besides reverence,
which are out of fashion."

He continued, smilingly: "As the old mansions disappear, Virginia, so
disintegrate those families whose ancestors gave names to the old lanes
of New Amsterdam. I reverence neither the one nor the other. Good
riddance! The fit alone survive."

"I still survive, if you please."

"Proving the rule, dear. But, yourself excepted, look at the few of us
who chance to be here in the South. Look at Courtlandt Classon,
intellectually destitute! Cuyp, a mental brother to the ox; and Vetchen
to the ass; and Mrs. Van Dieman to somebody's maidservant--that old
harridan with all the patrician distinction of a Dame des Halles--"

"Please, Louis!"

"Dear, I am right. Even Constance Palliser, still physically superb, but
mentally morbid--in love with what once was Wayward--with the ghost she
raised in her dead girlhood, there on the edge of yesterday--"

"Louis! Louis! And _you_! What were you yesterday? What are you
to-day?"

"What do I care what I was and am?--Dutch, British, burgher, or
cavalier?--What the deuce do I care, my dear? The Malcourts are rotten;
everybody knows it. Tressilvain is worse; my sister says so. As I told
you, the old families are done for--all except yours--"

"I am the last of mine, Louis."

"The last and best--"

"Are you laughing?"

"No; you are the only human one I've ever heard of among your race--the
sweetest, soundest, best--"

"I?... What you say is too terrible to laugh at. I--guilty in
mind--unsound--contaminated--"

"Temporarily. I'm going to-night. Time and absence are the great
antiseptics. When the corrupt cause disappears the effect follows. Cheer
up, dear; I take the night train."

But she only pressed her pale face closer to his shoulder. Their
interlocked shadows, huge, fantastic, streamed across the eastern dunes
as they moved slowly on together.

"Louis!"

"Yes?"

She could not say it. Close to the breaking point, she was ready now to
give up to him more than he might care for--the only shred left which
she had shrunk from letting him think was within his reach for the
asking--her name.

Pride, prejudice, had died out in the fierce outbreak of a heart
amazingly out of place in the body of one who bore her name.

Generations of her kinsmen, close and remote, had lived in the close
confines of narrow circles--narrow, bloodless, dull folk, almost all
distantly related--and they had lived and mated among themselves,
coldly defiant of that great law which dooms the over-cultivated and
inbred to folly and extinction.

Somewhere, far back along the race-line, some mongrel ancestor had begun
life with a heart; and, unsuspected, that obsolete organ had now
reappeared in her, irritating, confusing, amazing, and finally
stupefying her with its misunderstood pulsations.

At first, like a wounded creature, consciousness of its presence turned
her restless, almost vicious. Then from cynicism to incredulity she had
passed the bitter way to passion, and the shamed recoil from it; to
recklessness, and the contempt for it, and so through sorrow and
humility to love--if it were love to endure the evil in this man and to
believe in the good which he had never yet revealed to her save in a
half-cynical, half-amused content that matters rest in _statu quo_.

"The trouble with us," mused Malcourt, lazily switching the fragrant
beach-grapes with his riding-crop, "is inbreeding. Yes, that's it. And
we know what it brings to kings and kine alike. Tressilvain is half-mad,
I think. And we are used up and out of date.... The lusty, jewelled
bacchantes who now haunt the inner temple kindle the social flames with
newer names than ours. Few of us count; the lumbering British or Dutch
cattle our race was bred from, even in these brief generations, have
become decadent and barren; we are even passing from a fashion which we
have neither intellect to sustain nor courage to dictate to. It's the
raw West that is to be our Nemesis, I think.... 'Mix corpuscles or you
die!'--that's what I read as I run--I mean, saunter; the Malcourts never
run, except to seed. My, what phosphorescent perversion! One might
almost mistake it for philosophy.... But it's only the brilliancy of
decay, Virginia; and it's about time that the last Malcourt stepped down
and out of the scheme of things. My sister is older, but I don't mind
going first--even if it is bad manners."

"Is that why you have never asked me to marry you?" she said, white as a
ghost.

Startled to silence he walked on beside her. She had pressed her pallid
face against his shoulder again; one thin hand crushed her gloves and
riding-crop into her hip, the other, doubled, left in the palm pale
imprints of her fingers.

"Is _that_ the reason?" she repeated.

"No, dear."

"Is it because you do not care for me--enough?"

"Partly. But that is easily remedied."

"Or"--with bent head--"because you think too--lightly--of me--"

"No! That's a lie anyway."

"A--a lie?"

"Yes. You lie to yourself if you think that! You are _not_ that sort.
You are not, and you never were and never could be. Don't you suppose I
know?"--almost with a sneer: "I won't have it--nor would you! It is you,
not I, who have controlled this situation; and if you don't realise it I
do. I never doubted you even when you prattled to me of moderation. _I_
know that you were not named with your name in mockery, or in vain."

Dumb, thrilled, understanding in a blind way what this man had said,
dismayed to find safety amid the elements of destruction, a sudden
belief in herself--in him, too, began to flicker. "Had the still small
flame been relighted for her? Had it never entirely died?"

"If--you will have me, Louis," she whispered.

"I don't love you. I'm rather nearer than I ever have been just now. But
I am not in love."

"Could you ever--"

"Yes."

"Then--why--"

"I'll tell you why, some day. Not now."

They had come to where their horses were tied. He put her up, adjusted
boot-strap and skirt, then swung gracefully aboard his own pie-faced
Tallahassee nag, wheeling into the path beside her.

"The world," observed Malcourt, using his favourite quotation, "is _so_
full of a number of things--like you and me and that coral snake
yonder.... It's very hard to make a coral snake bite you; but it's death
if you succeed.... Whack that nag if he plunges! Lord, what a nose for
sarpints horses have! Hamil was telling me--by the way, there's nothing
degenerate about our distant cousin, John Garret Hamil; but he's not
pure pedigree. However, I'd advise him to marry into some fresh, new
strain--"

"He seems likely to," said Virginia.

After a moment Malcourt looked around at her curiously.

"Do you mean Shiela Cardross?"

"Obviously."

"You think it safe?"--mockingly.

"I wouldn't care if I were a man."

"Oh! I didn't suppose that a Suydam could approve of her."

"I do now--with envy.... You are right about the West. Do you know that
it seems to me as though in that girl all sections of the land were
merged, as though the freshest blood of all nations flowing through the
land had centred and mingled to produce that type of physical
perfection! It is a curious idea--isn't it, Louis?--to imagine that the
brightest, wholesomest, freshest blood of the nations within this nation
has combined to produce such a type! Suppose it were so. After all is it
not worth dispensing with a few worn names to look out at the world
through those fearless magnificent eyes of hers--to walk the world with
such limbs and such a body? Did you ever see such self-possession, such
superb capacity for good and evil, such quality and texture!... Oh, yes,
I am quite crazy about her--like everybody and John Garret Hamil,
third."

"Is he?"

She laughed. "Do you doubt it?"

Malcourt drew bridle, fished for his case, and lighted a cigarette; then
he spurred forward again, alert, intent, head partly turned in that
curious attitude of listening, though Virginia was riding now in pensive
silence.

"Louis," she said at last, "what is it you hear when you seem to listen
that way. It's uncanny."

"I'll tell _you_," he said. "My father had a very pleasant, persuasive
voice.... I was fond of him.... And sometimes I still argue with him--in
the old humourous fashion--"

"What?"--with a shiver.

"In the old amusing way," continued Malcourt quietly. "Sometimes he
makes suggestions to me--curious suggestions--easy ways out of
trouble--and I listen--as you noticed."

The girl looked at him, reined up closer, and bent forward, looking him
intently in the eyes.

"Well, dear?" inquired Malcourt, with a smile.

But she only straightened up in her saddle, a chill creeping in her
veins.

A few moments later he suggested that they gallop. He was obliged to,
for he had other interviews awaiting him. Also Portlaw, in a vile humour
with the little gods of high and low finance.

* * * * *

One of these interviews occurred after his final evening adieux to the
Cardross family and to Hamil. Shiela drove him to the hotel in Gray's
motor, slowly, when they were out of sight, at Malcourt's request.

"I wanted to give you another chance," he said. "I'm a little more
selfish, this time--because, if I had a decent opportunity I think I'd
try to fall in love with somebody or other--"

She flushed painfully, looking straight ahead over the steering-wheel
along the blinding path of the acetylenes.

"I am very sorry," she said, "because I had--had almost concluded to
tell them--everything."

"What!" he asked, aghast.

Her eyes were steadily fixed on the fan-shaped radiance ahead which
played fantastically along the silvery avenue of palms and swept the
white road with a glitter like moonlight streaming over snow.

"You mean you are ready for your freedom, Shiela?"

"No."

"_What_ do you mean?"

"That--it may be best--best--to tell them ... and face what is left of
life, together."

"You and I?"

"Yes."

He sat beside her, dumb, incredulous, nimble wits searching for
reasons. What was he to reckon with in this sudden, calm suggestion of a
martyrdom with him? A whim? Some occult caprice?--or a quarrel with
Hamil? Was she wearied of the deception? Or distrustful of herself, in
her new love for Hamil, lest she be tempted to free herself after all?
Was she already at that point where, desperate, benefits forgot,
wavering between infatuation and loyalty, she turned, dismayed, to the
only course which must crush temptation for ever?

"Is that it?" he asked.

"What?" Her lips moved, forming the word without sound.

"Is it because you are so sorely tempted to free yourself at their
expense?"

"Partly."

"You poor child!"

"No child now, Louis.... I have thought too deeply, too clearly. There
is no childhood left in me. I _know_ things.... You will help me, won't
you--if I find I need you?"

"Need _me_, Shiela?"

"I may," she said excitedly; "you can't tell; and I don't know. It is
all so confused. I thought I knew myself but I seem to have just
discovered a devil looking back at me out of my own reflected eyes from
my own mirror!"

"What an exaggerated little thing you are!" he said, forcing a laugh.

"Am I? It must be part of me then. I tell you, since that day they told
me what I am, I have wondered what else I might be. I don't know, but
I'm watching. There are changes--omens, sinister enough to frighten
me--"

"Are you turning morbid?"

"I don't know, Louis. Am I? How can I tell? Whom am I to ask? I _could_
ask my own mother if I had one--even if it hurt her. Mothers are made
for pain--as we young girls are. Miserable, wretched, deceitful,
frightened as I am I _could_ tell her--tell her all.... The longing to
have her, to tell her has become almost--almost unendurable--lately....
I have so much need of her.... You don't know the desolation of it--and
the fear! I beg your pardon for talking this way. It's over now. You see
I am quite calm."

"Can't you confide in your--other mother--"

"I have no right. She did not bear me."

"It is the same as though you were her own; she feels so--"

"She cannot feel so! Nor can I. If I could I would take my fears and
sorrows and my sins to her. I could take them to my own mother, for both
our sakes; I cannot, to her, for my own sake alone. And never can."

"Then--I don't understand! You have just suggested telling her about
ourselves, haven't you?"

"Yes. But not that it has been a horror--a mistake. If I tell her--if I
think it necessary--best--to tell them, I--it will be done with mask
still on--cheerfully--asking pardon with a smile--I do not lack that
kind of courage. I can do that--if I must."

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