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The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"There are pretty ones in them--sometimes," said Cecile, reminiscently
spearing a big red strawberry which resembled the popular and
conventional conception of a fat human heart.

Gray, still serious, said: "Unless we are outside of the danger zone I
think father ought to teach me something about business."

"If we blow up," observed Cecile, "I'll do clever monologues and support
everybody. I'd like that. And Shiela already writes poetry--"

"Nonsense!" said Shiela, very pink.

"Shiela! You do!"

"I did in school--" turning pinker under Hamil's tormenting gaze.

"And you do yet! I found an attempt on the floor--in your flowing
penmanship," continued the pitiless younger sister. "What is there to
blush about? Of course Phil and I were not low enough to read it, but
I'll bet it was about somebody we all know! Do you want to bet--Garry?"

"Cecile!" said her mother mildly.

"Yes, mother--I forgot that I'm not allowed to bet, but if I was--"

Shiela, exasperated, looked at her mother, who shook her head and rose
from the table, taking Hamil's arm.

"You little imp!" breathed Shiela fiercely to Cecile, "if you plague me
again I'll inform Mr. Hamil of what happened to you this morning."

"I don't care; Garry is part of the family," retorted Cecile, flushed
but defiant and not exactly daring to add: "or will be soon." Then she
put both arms around Shiela, and holding her imprisoned:

"_Are_ you in love?--you darling!" she whispered persuasively. "Oh,
don't commit yourself if you feel _that_ way!... And, O Shiela, you
should have seen Phil Gatewood following me in love-smitten hops when I
wouldn't listen! My dear, the creature managed to plant both feet on my
gown as I fled, and the parquet is _so_ slippery and the gown so flimsy
and, oh, there was a dreadful ripping sound and we both went down--"

Shiela was laughing now, holding her sister's gesticulating hands, as
she rattled on excitedly:

"I got to my feet in a blaze of fury, holding my gown on with both
hands--"

"Cissy!"

"And he gave one horror-stricken look and ran--"

Swaying there together in the deserted dining-room, they gave way to
uncontrolled laughter. Laughter rang out from the living-room, too,
where Gray was informing Mrs. Cardross and Hamil of the untoward climax
to a spring-time wooing; and when Shiela and Cecile came in the latter
looked suspiciously at Hamil, requesting to know the reason of his
mirth.

"Somebody will have to whisper it to you in rhyme," said Hamil; "it's
not fit for prose, Cissy."

Mrs. Cardross retired early. Gray went for a spin in his motor. Cecile,
mischievously persuaded that Hamil desired to have Shiela to himself for
half an hour, stifled her yawns and bedward inclinations and remained
primly near them until Gray returned.

Then the four played innocuous Bridge whist until Cecile's yawns could
no longer be disguised; and finally Gray rose in disgust when she
ignored the heart-convention and led him an unlovely spade.

"How many kinds of a chump can you be in one day?" asked her wrathful
brother.

"Pons longa, vita brevis," observed Hamil, intensely amused. "Don't sit
on her, Gray."

"O dear! O dear!" said Cecile calmly, "I'd rather be stepped on again
than sat on like that!"

"You're a sweet little thing anyway," said Hamil, "even if you do fall
down in Bridge as well as otherwise--"

"Shiela! You told Garret!"

"Cunning child," said Hamil; "make her dance the baby-dance, Shiela!"
And he and her sister and brother seized her unwilling hands and
compelled her to turn round and round, while they chanted in unison:

"Cissy's Bridge is falling down,
Falling down,
Falling down,
Cissy's gown is falling down,
My
Fair
Lady!"

"Garry, stop it!... It's only an excuse to hold Shiela's hand--"

But Shiela recited very gravely:

"Father's in Manhattan town,
Hunting up our money;
Philip's in the music-room,
Calling Cis his honey;
Cissy's sprinting through the hall,
Trying to be funny--"

"I _won't_ dance!" cried Cecile. But they sang insultingly:

"Rock-a-by Cissy!
Philip _will_ slop!
Cissy is angry,
For Philip won't stop."

"If dresses are stepped upon,
Something will fall,
Down will come petticoat, Cissy, and all!"

"O Garry, how _can_ you!"

"Because you've been too gay lately; you're marked for discipline, young
lady!"

"Who told you? Shiela?--and it _was_ my newest, dearest, duck of a
gown!... The situation was perfectly horrid, too. What elephants men
are!"

"You know, I'd accept him if I were you--just to teach him the value of
gowns," suggested Hamil.

But Shiela said seriously: "Phil Gatewood is a nice boy. We all knew
that he was going to ask you. You acted like a ninny, Cis."

"With my gown half off!--what would _you_ have done?" demanded the girl
hotly.

"Destroyed him," admitted Shiela, "in one way or another, dear. And now
I am going to bed--if everybody has had enough of Cissy's Bridge--"

"Me for the hay," observed Gray emphatically.

So they all went up the stairway together, lingering a few moments on
the landing to say good night.

Cecile retired first, bewailing the humiliation of not having a maid of
her own and requesting Shiela to send hers as she was too sleepy to
undress.

Gray caught sight of a moth fluttering around the electric lights and
made considerable noise securing the specimen. After which he also
retired, cyanide jar containing the victim tucked under his arm.




CHAPTER XVIII

PERIL


Shelia, standing by the lamplit table and resting one slim hand on the
edge of it, waited for Hamil to give the signal for separation.

Instead he said: "Are you really sleepy?"

"No."

"Then--"

"I dare not--to-night."

"For any particular reason?"

"For a thousand.... One is that I simply can't believe you are really
going North to-morrow. Why do you?" She had asked it nearly a thousand
times.

"I've got to begin Portlaw's park; and, besides, my work here is over--"

"Is that all you care about me? Oh, you are truly like the real Ulysses:

"Now toils the hero, trees on trees o'erthrown
Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan!"

Do you remember, in the Odyssey, when poor Calypso begs him to remain?

"Thus spoke Calypso to her god-like guest:
'This shows thee, friend, by old experience taught,
And learn'd in all the wiles of human thought,
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Thus wilt thou leave me? Are we thus to part?
Is Portlaw's Park the passion of thy heart?'"

Laughing, he answered in the Grecian verse:

"Whatever the gods shall destine me to bear,
'Tis mine to master with a constant mind;
Inured to peril, to the worst resigned,
Still I can suffer; their high will be done."

From the soft oval of her face the smile faded, but her voice was still
carelessly gay:

"And so he went away. But, concerning his nymph, Calypso, further Homer
sayeth not. Yet--in the immortal verse it chanced to be he, not she, who
was--married.... And I think I'll retire now--if you have nothing more
agreeable to say to me--"

"I have; in the garden--"

"No, I dare not risk it to-night. The guards are about--"

"It is my last night here--"

"We will see each other very soon in New York. And I'll be up in the
morning to drive you to the station--"

"But, Shiela, dear--"

"There was a bad nigger hanging around the groves last night and our
patrols are out.... No, it's too risky. Besides--"

"Besides--what?"

"I've been thinking."

He said, tenderly impatient:

"You little witch of Ogygia, come into the _patio_ then, and do your
thinking and let me make love to you."

But she would not raise her eyes, standing there in the rose lamplight,
the perverse smile still edging her lips.

"Calypso," he repeated persuasively.

"No.... Besides, I have nothing to offer you, Ulysses.... You remember
what the real Calypso offered the real Ulysses if he'd remain with her
in Ogygia?"

"Eternal youth and love?" He bent over the table, moving his hand to
cover hers where it rested in the lamplight. "You have given me eternity
in love already," he said.

"Have I?" But she would not lift her eyes.... "Then why make love to me
if you have it ready-made for you?"

"Will you come?"

And she, quoting the Odyssey again:

"Swear, then, thou mean'st not what my soul forebodes;
Swear by the solemn oath that binds the gods!"

And in turn he quoted:

"Loved and adored, O goddess as thou art,
Forgive the weakness of a human heart."

But she said with gay audacity, "I have nothing to forgive you--yet."

"Are you challenging me? Because I am likely to take you into my arms at
any moment if you are."

"Not _here_--Garry!"--looking up in quick concern, for his recklessness
at times dismayed her. Considering him doubtfully she made up her mind
that she was safe, and her little chin went up in defiance.

"The hammock's in the _patio_," he said.

"There's moonlight there, too. No, thank you--with Cissy wakeful and
her windows commanding every nook!... Besides--as I told you, I've been
thinking."

"And what have you concluded?"

Delicate straight nose in the air, eyebrows arched in airy disdain, she
stood preoccupied with some little inward train of thought that
alternately made grave and gay the upcurled corners of her lips.

"About this question of--ah--love-making--" dropping her eyes in
pretence of humility.

"It is no longer a question, you know."

She would _not_ look up; her lashes seemed to rest on the bloom of the
rounded cheek as though the lids were shut, but there came from the
shadows between the lids a faint glimmer; and he thought of that first
day when from her lifted gaze a thousand gay little demons seemed to
laugh at him.

"I've been thinking," she remarked, "that this question of making love
to me should be seriously discussed."

"That's what I've been asking you to do in the _patio_--"

"I've been thinking, with deep but rather tardy concern, that it is not
the best policy for me to be--courted--any more."

She glanced up; her entire expression had suddenly altered to a gravity
unmistakable.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"Can _you_ tell _me_? I ask you, Garry, what has happened?"

"I don't understand--"

"Nor I.... Because that little fool you kissed--so many, many centuries
ago--is not this disillusioned woman who is standing here!... May I be a
little bit serious with you?"

"Of course," he said, amused; "come out on the east balcony and tell me
what troubles you."

She considered him, smilingly suspicious of his alacrity.

"I don't think we had better go to the balcony." "Shiela, can't you ever
get over being ashamed when I make love to you?"

"I don't want to get over it, Garry."

"Are you still afraid to let me love you?"

Her mouth curved gravely as a perplexed child's; she looked down at the
table where his sun-burnt hand now lay lightly across hers.

"I wished to speak to you about myself--if, somehow you could help me to
say what--what is very difficult for a girl to say to a man--even when
she loves him.... I don't think I can say it, but I'll try."

"Then if you'll come to the balcony--"

"No, I can't trust you--or myself--unless we promise each other."

"Have I got to do that again?"

"Yes, if I am to go with you. I promise! Do you?"

"If I must," he said with very bad grace--so ungraciously in fact that
as they passed from the eastern corridor on to the Spanish balcony she
forgot her own promise and slipped her hand into his in half-humourous,
half-tender propitiation.

"Are you going to be disagreeable to me, Garry?"

"You darling!" he said; and, laughing, yet secretly dismayed at her own
perversion, she hurriedly untwisted her fingers from his and made a new
and fervid promise to replace the one just broken.

The moonlight was magnificent, silvering forest, dune, and chaparral.
Far to the east a thin straight gleam revealed the sea.

She seated herself under the wall, lying back against it; he lay
extended on the marble shelf beside her, studying the moonlight on her
face.

"What was it you had to tell me, Shiela? Remember I am going in the
morning."

"I've turned cowardly; I cannot tell you.... Perhaps later.... Look at
the Seminole moon, Garry. They have such a pretty name for it in
March--Tau-sau-tchusi--'Little Spring Moon'! And in May they call it the
'Mulberry Moon'--Kee-hassi, and in November it is a charming
name--Hee-wu-li--'Falling Leaf Moon'!--and August is Hyothlucco--'Big
Ripening Moon.' ... Garry, this moonlight is filling my veins with
quicksilver. I feel very restless, very heathenish." ... She cast a
slanting side-glance at him, lips parting with soundless laughter; and
in the witchery of the moon she seemed exquisitely unreal, head tipped
back, slender throat and shoulders snow-white in the magic lustre that
enveloped them.

Resting one bare arm on the marble she turned, chin on shoulder, looking
mischievously down at him, lovely, fresh, perfect as the Cherokee roses
that spread their creamy, flawless beauty across the wall behind her.

Imperceptibly her expression changed to soft friendliness, to
tenderness, to a hint of deeper emotion; and her lids drooped a little,
then opened gravely under the quick caress of his eyes; and very gently
she moved her head from side to side as reminder and refusal.

"Another man's wife," she said deliberately.... "Thy neighbour's
wife.... That's what we've done!"

Like a cut of a whip her words brought him upright to confront her, his
blood tingling on the quick edge of anger.

For always, deep within him, lay that impotent anger latent; always his
ignorance of this man haunted him like the aftermath of an ugly dream.
But of the man himself she had never spoken since that first day in the
wilderness. And then she had not named him.

Her face had grown very serious, but her eyes remained unfathomable
under his angry gaze.

"Is there any reason to raise that spectre between us?" he demanded.

"Dear, has it ever been laid?" she asked sorrowfully.

The muscles in his cheeks tightened and his eyes narrowed unpleasantly.
Only the one feature saved the man from sullen commonness in his
suppressed anger--and that was his boyish mouth, clean, sweet, nobly
moulded, giving the lie to the baffled brutality gleaming in the eyes.
And the spark died out as it had come, subdued, extinguished when he
could no longer sustain the quiet surprise of her regard.

"How very, very young you are after all," she said gently. "Come nearer.
Lift your sulky, wicked head. Now ask my pardon for not understanding."

"I ask it.... But when you speak of him--"

"Hush. He is only a shadow to you--scarcely more to me. He must remain
so. Do you not understand that I wish him to remain a shadow to you--a
thing without substance--without a name?"

He bent his head, nodding almost imperceptibly.

"Garry?"

He looked up in response.

"There is something else--if I could only say it.... I might if you
would close your eyes." ... She hesitated, half-fearful, then drew his
head down on her knees, daintily, using her finger-tips only in the
operation.

"Are you listening to what I am trying to tell you?"

"Yes, very intently."

"Then--it's about my being afraid--of love.... Are you listening?... It
is very difficult for me to say this.... It is about my being afraid....
I used to be when I did not know enough to be. And now, Garry, when I am
less ignorant than I was--when I have divined enough of my unknown self
to be afraid--dearest, I am not."

She bent gently above the boyish head lying face downward on her
knees--waited timidly for some response, touched his hair.

"I am listening," he nodded.

She said: "My will to deny you, my courage to control myself seem to be
waning. I love you so; and it is becoming so much worse, such a blind,
unreasoning love.... And--do you think it will grow so much worse that I
could be capable of anything ignoble? Do you think I might be mad enough
to beg my freedom? I--I don't know where it is leading me, dear. Do you?
It is that which bewilders me--that I should love you so--that I should
not be afraid to love you so.... Hush, dear! Don't speak--for I shall
never be able to tell you this if you speak, or look at me. And I want
to ask you a question. May I? And will you keep your eyes covered?"

"Yes."

"Then--there are memories which burn my cheeks--hush!--I do not regret
them.... Only, what am I changing into that I am capable of
forgetting--everything--in the happiness of consenting to things I never
dreamed of--like this"--bending and laying her lips softly against his
cheek.... "That was wrong; it ought to frighten me. But it does not."

He turned, looking up into the flushed young face and drew it closer
till their cheeks touched.

"Don't look at me! Why do you let me drift like this? It is madness--to
give up to each other the way we do--"

"I wish we could give up the world for each other."

"I wish so too. I would--except for the others. Do you suppose I'd
hesitate if it were not for them?"

They looked at each other with a new and subtler audacity.

"You see," she said with a wistful smile, "_this_ is not Shiela Cardross
who sits here smiling into those brown eyes of yours. I think I died
before you ever saw me; and out of the sea and the mist that day some
changeling crept into your boat for your soul's undoing. Do you remember
in Ingoldsby--'The cidevant daughter of the old Plantagenet line '?"

They laughed like children.

"Do you think our love-tempted souls are in any peril?" he asked
lightly.

The question arrested her mirth so suddenly that he thought she must
have misunderstood.

"What is it, Shiela?" he inquired, surprised.

"Garry--will you tell me something--if you can?... Then, what does it
mean, the saying--'souls lost through love'? Does it mean what we have
done?--because I am married? Would people think our souls lost--if they
knew?"

"No, you blessed child!"

"Well, how can--"

"It's a lie anyway," he said. "Nothing is lost through love. It is
something very different they mean."

"Yes," she said calmly, "something quite inconceivable, like 'Faust' and
'The Scarlet Letter,' ... I _thought_ that was what they meant!"

Brooding over him, silent, pensive, clear eyes fearlessly meeting his,
she drifted into guiltless retrospection.

"After all," she said, "except for letting everybody know that we belong
to each other this is practically like marriage. Look at that honeymoon
up there, Garry.... If, somehow, they could think we are engaged, and
would let us alone for the rest of our lives, it would not matter....
Except I should like to have a house alone with you."

And she stooped, resting her cheek lightly against his, eyes vaguely
sweet in the moonlight.

"I love you so," she murmured, as though to herself, "and there seems no
end to it. It is such a hopeless sequence when yesterday's love becomes
to-day's adoration and to-morrow's worship. What am I to do? What is the
use of saying I am not free to love you, when I do?" She smiled
dreamily. "I was silly enough to think it impossible once. Do you
remember?"

"You darling!" he whispered, adoring her innocence. Then as he lay, head
cradled on her knees, looking up at her, all unbidden, a vision of the
future in its sharp-cut ominous desolation flashed into his vision--the
world without her!--the endless stretch of time--youth with no meaning,
effort wasted, attainment without desire, loneliness, arid, terrible
days unending.

"It is too--too senseless!" he breathed, stumbling to his feet as the
vague, scarcely formulated horror of it suddenly turned keen and bit
into him as he began to realise for the first time something of what it
threatened.

"What is it, Garry?" she asked in gentle concern, as he stood looking
darkly at her. "Is it time to go? You are tired, I know." She rose and
opened the great glass doors. "You poor tired boy," she whispered,
waiting for him. And as he did not stir: "What is the matter, Garry?"

"Nothing. I am trying to understand that our winter is ended."

She nodded. "Mother and Gray and Cecile and I go North in April.... I
wish we might stay through May--that is, if you--" She looked at him in
silent consternation. "Where will _you_ be!"

He said in a sullen voice: "That is what I was thinking of--our
separation.... Do you realise that it is almost here?"

"No," she said faintly, "I cannot."

He moved forward, opening the glass doors wider; she laid one hand on
his arm as though to guide herself; but the eastern corridors were
bright with moonlight, every corner illuminated.

They were very silent until they turned into the south corridor and
reached her door; and there he suddenly gave way to his passionate
resentment, breaking out like a spoiled boy:

"Shiela, I tell you it's going to be unendurable! There must be some way
out, some chance for us.... I _don't_ mean to ask you to do what
is--what you consider dishonourable. You wouldn't do it anyway, whether
or not I asked you--"

"But don't ask me," she said, turning very white. "I don't know what I
am capable of if I should ever see you suffer!"

"You _couldn't_ do it!" he repeated; "it isn't in you to take your
happiness at their expense, is it? You say you know how they would feel;
I don't. But if you're asking for an annulment--"

"What? Do you mean divorce?"

"No.... That is--different--"

"But what--"

"You dear," he said, suddenly gentle, "you have never been a--wife; and
you don't know it."

"Garry, are you mad?"

"Shiela, dear, some day will you very quietly ask some woman the
difference between divorce and annulment?"

"Y-yes, if you wish.... Is it something you mayn't tell me, Garry?"

"Yes.... I don't know! You sometimes make me feel as though I could tell
you anything.... Of course I couldn't ... you darling!" He stepped
nearer. "You are so good and sweet, so utterly beyond evil, or the
vaguest thought of it--"

"Garry--I am _not_! And you know it!"

He only laughed at her.

"You _don't_ think I am a horrid sort of saint, do you?"

"No, not the horrid sort--"

"Garry! How can you say such things when I'm half ready now to run away
with you!"

The sudden hint of fire in her face and voice, and something new in her
eyes, sobered him.

"Now do you know what I am?" she said, breathing unevenly and watching
him. "Only one thing keeps me respectable. I'd go with you; I'd live in
rags to be with you. I ask nothing in the world or of the world except
you. You could make me what you pleased, mould me--mar me, I
believe--and I would be the happiest woman who ever loved. _That_ is
your saint!"

Flushed with her swift emotion, she stood a minute facing him, then laid
her hand on the door knob behind her, still looking him in the eyes.
Behind her the door slowly swung open under the pressure.

His own self-control was fast going; he dared not trust himself to speak
lest he break down and beg for the only chance that her loyalty to
others forbade her to take. But the new and deeper emotion which she had
betrayed had awakened the ever-kindling impatience in him, and now,
afire, he stood looking desperately on all he must for ever lose, till
the suffering seemed unendurable in the checked violence of his revolt.

"Good night," she whispered sorrowfully, as the shadow deepened on his
altered face.

"Are you going!"

"Yes.... And, somehow I feel that perhaps it is better not to--kiss me
to-night. When I see you--this way--Garry, I could find it in me to do
anything--almost.... Good night."

Watching him, she waited in silence for a while, then turned slowly and
lighted the tiny night-lamp on the table beside her bed.

When she returned to the open door there was no light in the hall. She
heard him moving somewhere in the distance.

"Where are you, Garry?"

He came back slowly through the dim corridor.

"Were you going without a word to me?" she asked.

He came nearer and leaned against the doorway.

"You are quite right," he said sullenly. "I've been a fool to let us
drift in this way. I don't know where we're headed for, and it's time I
did."

"What do you mean?"--in soft consternation.

"That there is no hope left for us--and that we are both pretty young,
both in love, both close to desperation. At times I tell you I feel like
a cornered beast--feel like showing my teeth at the world--like tearing
you from it at any cost. I'd do it, too, if it were not for your father
and mother. You and I could stand it."

"I would let you do it--if it were not for them," she said.

They looked at one another, both pale.

"Would you give up the whole moral show for me?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"You'd get a first-rate scoundrel."

"I wouldn't care if it were you."

"There's one thing," he said with a bluntness bordering on brutality,
"all this is changing me into a man unfit to touch you. I warn you."

"What!"

"I tell you not to trust me!" he said almost savagely. "With heart and
soul and body on fire for you--mad for you--I'm not to be trusted!"

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