The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"Better ask at the Beach Club," replied Hamil, laughing; "I say,
Malcourt, I've had a corking swim out yonder--"

"Go in deep?" inquired Malcourt guilelessly.

"Deep? It's forty fathoms off the reef."

"I didn't mean the water," murmured Malcourt.

CHAPTER II

A LANDING

The _Ariani_ was to sail that evening, her destination being Miami and
the West Coast where Portlaw desired to do some tarpon fishing and
Wayward had railroad interests. Malcourt, always in a receptive
attitude, was quite ready to go anywhere when invited. Otherwise he
preferred a remunerative attention to business.

Hamil, however, though with the gay company aboard, was not of them; he
had business at Palm Beach; his luggage had already been sent ashore;
and now, prepared to follow, he stood a little apart from the others on
the moonlit deck, making his adieux to the master of the _Ariani_.

"It's been perfectly stunning--this cruise," he said. "It was kind of
you, Wayward; I don't know how to tell you how kind--but your boat's a
corker and you are another--"

"Do you like this sort of thing?" asked Wayward grimly.

"Like it? It's only a part of your ordinary lives--yours and Portlaw's;
so you are not quite fitted to understand. But, Wayward, I've been in
heavy harness. You have been doing this sort of heavenly thing--how many
years?"

"Too many. Tell me; you've really made good this last year, haven't you,
Garry?"

Hamil nodded. "I had to."

He laid his hand on the older man's arm. "Why do you know," he said,
"when they gave me that first commission for the little park at Hampton
Hills--thanks to you--I hadn't five dollars in all the world."

Wayward stood looking at him through his spectacles, absently pulling at
his moustache, which was already partly gray.

"Garry," he said in his deep, pleasant voice that was however never very
clear, "Portlaw tells me that you are to do his place. Then there are
the new parks in Richmond Borough, and this enormous commission down
here among the snakes and jungles. Well--God bless you. You're
twenty-five and busy. I'm forty-five and"--he looked drearily into the
younger man's eyes--"burnt out," he said with his mirthless laugh--"and
still drenching the embers with the same stuff that set 'em ablaze....
Good-bye, Garry. Your boat's alongside. My compliments to your aunt."

At the gangway the younger man bade adieu to Malcourt and Portlaw,
laughing as the latter indignantly requested to know why Hamil wasted
his time attending to business.

Malcourt drew him aside:

"So you're going to rig up a big park and snake preserve for Neville
Cardross?"

"I'm going to try, Louis. You know the family, I believe, don't you?"

Malcourt gazed placidly at him. "Very well indeed," he replied
deliberately. "They're a, good, domestic, mother-pin-a-rose-on-me sort
of family.... I'm a sort of distant cousin--run of the house and
privilege of kissing the girls--not now, but once. I'm going to stay
there when we get back from Miami."

"You didn't tell me that?" observed Hamil, surprised.

"No," said Malcourt carelessly, "I didn't know it myself. Just made up
my mind to do it. Saves hotel expenses. Well--your cockle-shell is
waiting. Give my regards to the family--particularly to Shiela." He
looked curiously at Hamil; "particularly to Shiela," he repeated; but
Hamil missed the expression of his eyes in the dusk.

"Are you really going to throw us over like this?" demanded Portlaw as
the young men turned back together across the deck.

"Got to do it," said Hamil cheerfully, offering his hand in adieu.

"Don't plead necessity," insisted Portlaw. "You've just landed old man
Cardross, and you've got the Richmond parks, and you're going to sting
me for more than I'm worth. Why on earth do you cut and run this way?"

"No man in his proper senses really knows why he does anything.
Seriously, Portlaw, my party is ended--"

"Destiny gave Ulysses a proud party that lasted ten years; wasn't it
ten, Malcourt?" demanded Portlaw. "Stay with us, son; you've nine years
and eleven months of being a naughty boy coming to you--including a few
Circes and grand slams--"

"He's met his Circe," cut in Malcourt, leaning languidly over the rail;
"she's wearing a scarlet handkerchief this season--"

Portlaw, laughing fatly, nodded. "Louis discovered your Circe through
the glasses climbing into your boat--"

"What a busy little beast you are, Malcourt," observed Hamil, annoyed,
glancing down at the small boat alongside.

"'Beast' is good! You mean the mere sight of her transformed Louis into
the classic shote," added Portlaw, laughing louder as Hamil, still
smiling through his annoyance, went over the side. And a moment later
the gig shot away into the star-set darkness.

From the bridge Wayward wearily watched it through his night glasses;
Malcourt, slim and graceful, sat on the rail and looked out into the
Southern dusk, an unlighted cigarette between his lips.

"That kills our four at Bridge," grumbled Portlaw, leaning heavily
beside him. "We'll have to play Klondike and Preference now, or call in
the ship's cat.... Hello, is that you, Jim?" as Wayward came aft,
limping a trifle as he did at certain times.

"That girl had a good figure--through the glasses. I couldn't make out
her face; it was probably the limit; combinations are rare," mused
Malcourt. "And then--the fog came! It was like one of those low-down
classical tricks of Jupiter when caught philandering."

Portlaw laughed till his bulky body shook. "The Olympian fog was
wasted," he said; "John Garret Hamil 3d still preserves his nursery
illusions."

"He's lucky," remarked Wayward, staring into the gloom.

"But not fortunate," added Malcourt; "there's a difference between luck
and fortune. Read the French classics."

Wayward growled; Malcourt, who always took a malicious amusement in
stirring him up, grinned at him sideways.

"No man is fit for decent society until he's lost all his illusions," he
said, "particularly concerning women."

"Some of us have been fools enough to lose our illusions," retorted
Wayward sharply, "but you never had any, Malcourt; and that's no
compliment from me to you."

Portlaw chuckled. "We never lose illusions; we mislay 'em," he
suggested; "and then we are pretty careful to mislay only that
particular illusion which inconveniences us." He jerked his heavy head
in Malcourt's direction. "Nobody clings more frantically to illusions
than your unbaked cynic; Louis, you're not nearly such a devil of a
fellow as you imagine you are."

Malcourt smiled easily and looked out over the waves.

"Cynicism is old-fashioned," he said; "dogma is up to date. Credo! I
believe in a personal devil, virtuous maidens in bowers, and rosewood
furniture. As for illusions I cherish as many as you do!" He turned with
subtle impudence to Wayward. "And the world is littered with the
shattered fragments."

"It's littered with pups, too," observed Wayward, turning on his heel.
And he walked away, limping, his white mess jacket a pale spot in the
gloom.

Malcourt looked after him; an edge of teeth glimmering beneath his full
upper lip.

"It might be more logical if he'd cut out his alcohol before he starts
in as a gouty marine missionary," he observed. "Last night he sat there
looking like a superannuated cavalry colonel in spectacles, neuritis
twitching his entire left side, unable to light his own cigar; and there
he sat and rambled on and on about innate purity and American
womanhood."

He turned abruptly as a steward stepped up bearing a decanter and tray
of glasses.

Portlaw helped himself, grumbling under his breath that he meant to cut
out this sort of thing and set Wayward an example.

Malcourt lifted his glass gaily:

"Our wives and sweethearts; may they never meet!"

They set back their empty glasses; Portlaw started to move away, still
muttering about the folly of self-indulgence; but the other detained
him.

"Wayward took it out of me in 'Preference' this morning while Garry was
out courting. I'd better liquidate to-night, hadn't I, Billy?"

"Certainly," said Portlaw.

The other shook his head. "I'll get it all back at Miami, of course. In
the mean time--if you don't mind letting me have enough to square
things--"

Portlaw hesitated, balancing his bulk uneasily first on one foot, then
the other.

"I don't mind; no; only--"

"Only what?" asked Malcourt. "I told you I couldn't afford to play cards
on this trip, but you insisted."

"Certainly, certainly! I expected to consider you as--as--"

"I'm your general manager and I'm ready at all times to earn my salary.
If you think it best to take me away from the estate for a junketing
trip and make me play cards you can do it of course; but if you think
I'm here to throw my money overboard I'm going back to-morrow!"

"Nonsense," said Portlaw; "you're not going back. There's nothing doing
in winter up there that requires your personal attention--"

"It's a bad winter for the deer--I ought to be there now--"

"Well, can't Blake and O'Connor attend to that?"

"Yes, I suppose they can. But I'm not going to waste the winter and my
salary in the semi-tropics just because you want me to--"

"O Lord!" said Portlaw, "what are you kicking about? Have I ever--"

"You force me to be plain-spoken; you never seem to understand that if
you insist on my playing the wealthy do-nothing that you've got to keep
me going. And I tell you frankly, Billy, I'm tired of it."

"Oh, don't flatten your ears and show your teeth," protested Portlaw
amiably. "I only supposed you had enough--with such a salary--to give
yourself a little rope on a trip like this, considering you've nobody
but yourself to look out for, and that _I_ do that and pay you heavily
for the privilege"--his voice had become a mumble--"and all you do is to
take vacations in New York or sit on a horse and watch an army of men
plant trout and pheasants, and cut out ripe timber--O hell!"

"_What_ did you say?"

Portlaw became good-humouredly matter of fact: "I _said_ 'hell,'
Louis--which meant, 'what's the use of squabbling.' It also means that
you are going to have what you require as a matter of course; so come on
down to my state-room and let us figure it up before Jim Wayward begins
to turn restless and limp toward the card-room."

As they turned and strolled forward, Malcourt nudged him:

"Look at the fireworks over Lake Worth," he said; "probably Palm Beach's
welcome to her new and beardless prophet."

"It's one of their cheap Venetian fetes," muttered Portlaw. "I know 'em;
they're rather amusing. If we weren't sailing in an hour we'd go. No
doubt Hamil's in it already; probably Cardross put him next to a bunch
of dreams and he's right in it at this very moment."

"With the girl in the red handkerchief," added Malcourt. "I wish we had
time."

"I believe I've seen that girl somewhere," mused Portlaw.

"Perhaps you have; there are all kinds at Palm Beach, even yours, and,"
he added with his easy impudence, "I expect to preserve my notions
concerning every one of them. Ho! Look at that sheaf of sky-rockets,
Billy! Zip! Whir-r! Bang! Great is Diana of the Ephesians!--bless her
heart!"

"Going up like Garret Hamil's illusions," said Portlaw, sentimentally.
"I wonder if he sees 'em and considers the moral they are writing across
the stars. O slush! Life is like a stomach; if you fill it too full it
hurts you. What about _that_ epigram, Louis? What about it?"

The other's dark, graceful head was turned toward the fiery fete on
shore, and his busy thoughts were with that lithe, dripping figure he
had seen through the sea-glasses, climbing into a distant boat. For the
figure reminded him of a girl he had known very well when the world was
younger; and the memory was not wholly agreeable.

CHAPTER III

AN ADVANCE

Hamil stood under the cocoanut palms at the lake's edge and watched the
lagoon where thousands of coloured lanterns moved on crafts, invisible
except when revealed in the glare of the rushing rockets.

Lamps glittered everywhere; electric lights were doubly festooned along
the sea wall, drooping creeper-like from palm to palmetto, from
flowering hibiscus to sprawling banyan, from dainty china-berry to
grotesque screw-pine tree, shedding strange witch-lights over masses of
blossoms, tropical and semi-tropical. Through which the fine-spun spray
of fountains drifted, and the great mousy dusk-moths darted through the
bars of light with the glimmering bullet-flight of summer meteors.

And everywhere hung the scent of orange bloom and the more subtle
perfume of white and yellow jasmine floated through the trees from
gardens or distant hammocks, combining in one intoxicating aroma, spiced
always with the savour of the sea.

Hamil was aware of considerable noise, more or less musical, afloat and
ashore; a pretentious orchestra played third-rate music under the hotel
colonnade; melody arose from the lantern-lit lake, with clamourous
mandolins and young voices singing; and over all hung the confused
murmur of unseen throngs, harmonious, capricious; laughter, voice
answering voice, and the distant shouts as brilliantly festooned boats
hailed and were hailed across the water.

Hamil passed on to the left through crowded gardens, pressing his way
slowly where all around him lantern-lit faces appeared from the dusk and
vanished again into it; where the rustle of summer gowns sweeping the
shaven lawns of Bermuda grass sounded like a breeze in the leaves.

Sometimes out of the dusk all tremulous with tinted light the rainbow
ray of a jewel flashed in his eyes--or sometimes he caught the glint of
eyes above the jewel--a passing view of a fair face, a moment's
encountering glance, and, maybe, a smile just as the shadows falling
turned the garden's brightness to a mystery peopled with phantoms.

Out along the shell road he sauntered, Whitehall rising from tropic
gardens on his right, on his left endless gardens again, and white
villas stretching away into the starlight; on, under the leaning
coco-palms along quays and low walls of coquina where the lagoon lay
under the silvery southern planets.

After a little he discovered that he had left the bulk of the throng
behind, though in front of him and behind, the road was still dotted
with white-clad groups strolling or resting on the sea-wall.

Far out on the lake the elfin pageant continued, but now he could
scarcely hear the music; the far cries and the hiss of the rockets came
softly as the whizzing of velvet-winged moths around orange blossoms.

The January night was magnificent; he could scarcely comprehend that
this languid world of sea and palm, of heavy odour and slow breezes, was
his own land still. Under the spell the Occident vanished; it was the
Orient--all this dreamy mirage, these dim white walls, this
spice-haunted dusk, the water inlaid with stars, the fairy foliage, the
dew drumming in the stillness like the sound of goblin tattooing.

Never before had he seen this enchanted Southern land which had always
been as much a part of his mother-land as Northern hill and Western
plain--as much his as the roaring dissonance of Broadway, or the icy
silence of the tundras, or the vast tranquil seas of corn rippling mile
on mile under the harvest moon of Illinois.

He halted, unquiet in the strangeness of it all, restless under its
exotic beauty, conscious of the languor stealing over him--the
premonition of a physical relaxation that he had never before
known--that he instinctively mistrusted.

People in groups passed and repassed along the lagoon wall where,
already curiously tired, he had halted beside an old bronze cannon--some
ancient Spanish piece, if he could judge by the arms and arabesques
covering the breech, dimly visible in the rays of a Chinese lantern.

Beyond was a private dock where two rakish power-boats lay, receiving
their cargo of young men and girls--all very animated and gay under the
gaudy electric lanterns strung fore and aft rainbow fashion.

He seated himself on the cannon, lingering until both boats cleared for
the carnival, rushing out into the darkness like streaks of
multi-coloured flame; then his lassitude increasing, he rose and
sauntered toward the hotel which loomed like a white mountain afire
above the dark masses of tropic trees. And again the press of the throng
hemmed him in among the palms and fountains and hedges of crimson
hibiscus; again the dusk grew gay with voices and the singing overtone
of violins; again the suffocating scent of blossoms, too sweet and
penetrating for the unacclimated, filtered through and through him, till
his breath came unevenly, and the thick odours stirred in him strange
senses of expectation, quickening with his pulses to a sudden prophecy.

And at the same instant he saw the girl of whom he had been thinking.

She was on the edge of a group of half a dozen or more men in evening
dress, and women in filmy white--already close to him--so near that the
frail stuff of her skirt brushed him, and the subtle, fresh aroma of her
seemed to touch his cheek like a breath as she passed.

"Calypso," he whispered, scarcely conscious that he spoke aloud.

A swift turn of her head, eyes that looked blankly into his, and she had
passed.

A sudden realisation of his bad manners left his ears tingling. What on
earth had prompted him to speak? What momentary relaxation had permitted
him an affront to a young girl whose attitude toward him that morning
had been so admirable?

Chagrined, he turned back to seek some circling path through the dense
crowd ahead; and was aware, in the darkness, of a shadowy figure
entering the jasmine arbour. And though his eyes were still confused by
the lantern light he knew her again in the dusk.

As they passed she said under her breath: "That was ill-bred. I am
disappointed."

He wheeled in his tracks; she turned to confront him for an instant.

"I'm just a plain beast," he said. "You won't forgive me of course."

"You had no right to say what you did. You said 'Calypso'--and I ought
not to have heard you.... But I did.... Tell me; if I am too generous to
suspect you of intentional impertinence, you are now too chastened to
suspect that I came back to give you this chance. That is quite true,
isn't it?"

"Of course. You _are_ generous and--it's simply fine of you to overlook
it."

"I don't know whether I intend to overlook it; I was surprised and
disappointed; but I _did_ desire to give you another chance. And I was
so afraid you'd be rude enough to take it that--I spoke first. That was
logical. Oh, I know what I'm doing--and it's particularly common of
me--being who I am--"

She paused, meeting his gaze deliberately.

"You don't know who I am. Do you?"

"No," he said. "I don't deserve to. But I'll be miserable until I do."

After a moment: "And you are not going to ask me--because, once, I said
that it was nice of you not to?"

The hint of mockery in her voice edged his lips with a smile, but he
shook his head. "No, I won't ask you that," he said. "I've been beastly
enough for one day."

"Don't you care to know?"

"Of course I care to know."

"Yet, exercising all your marvellous masculine self-control, you nobly
refuse to ask?"

"I'm afraid to," he said, laughing; "I'm horribly afraid of you."

She considered him with clear, unsmiling eyes.

"Coward!" she said calmly.

He nodded his head, laughing still. "I know it; I almost lost you by
saying 'Calypso' a moment ago and I'm taking no more risks."

"Am I to infer that you expect to recover me after this?"

And, as he made no answer: "You dare not admit that you hope to see me
again. You _are_ horribly afraid of me--even if I have defied convention
and your opinions and have graciously overlooked your impertinence. In
spite of all this you are still afraid of me. Are you?"

"Yes," he said; "as much as I naturally ought to be."

"_That_ is nice of you. There's only one kind of a girl of whom men are
really afraid.... And now I don't exactly know what to do about
you--being, myself, as guilty and horrid as you have been."

She regarded him contemplatively, her hands joined behind her back.

"Exactly what to do about you I don't know," she repeated, leisurely
inspecting him. "Shall I tell you something? I am not afraid to; I am
not a bit cowardly about it either. Shall I?"

"If you dare," he said, smiling and uncertain.

"Very well, then; I rather like you, Mr. Hamil."

"You _are_ a trump!" he blurted out, reddening with surprise.

"Are you astonished that I know you?"

"I don't see how you found out--"

"Found out! What perfectly revolting vanity! Do you suppose that the
moment I left you I rushed home and began to make happy and incoherent
inquiries? Mr. Hamil, you disappoint me every time you speak--and also
every time you don't."

"I seem to be doomed."

"You are. You can't help it. Tell me--as inoffensively as possible--are
you here to begin your work?"

"M-my work?"

"Yes, on the Cardross estate--"

"You have heard of that!" he exclaimed, surprised.

"Y-es--" negligently. "Petty gossip circulates here. A cracker at West
Palm Beach built a new chicken coop, and we all heard of it. Tell me, do
you still desire to see me again?"

"I do--to pay a revengeful debt or two."

"Oh! I have offended you? Pay me now, if you please, and let us end this
indiscretion."

"You will let me see you again, won't you?"

"Why? Mr. Hamil."

"Because I--I _must_!"

"Oh! You are becoming emphatic. So I am going.... And I've half a mind
to take you back and present you to my family.... Only it wouldn't do
for _me_; any other girl perhaps might dare--under the circumstances;
but _I_ can't--and that's all I'll tell you."

Hamil, standing straight and tall, straw hat tucked under one arm, bent
toward her with the formality and engaging deference natural to him.

"You have been very merciful to me; only a girl of your caste could
afford to. Will you forgive my speaking to you as I did?--when I said
'Calypso!' I have no excuse; I don't know why I did. I'm even sorrier
for myself than for you."

"I _was_ hurt.... Then I supposed that you did not mean it.
Besides"--she looked up with her rare smile--"I knew you, Mr. Hamil, in
the boat this morning. I haven't really been very dreadful."

"You knew even _then_?"

"Yes, I did. The Palm Beach News published your picture a week ago; and
I read all about the very remarkable landscape architect who was coming
to turn the Cardross jungle into a most wonderful Paradise."

"You knew me all that time?"

"All of it, Mr. Hamil."

"From the moment you climbed into my boat?"

"Practically. Of course I did not look at you very closely at first....
Does that annoy you? It seems to ... or something does, for even in the
dusk I can see your ever-ready blush--"

"I don't know why you pretend to think me such a fool," he protested,
laughing; "you seemed to take that for granted from the very first."

"Why not? You persistently talked to me when you didn't know me--you're
doing it now for that matter!--and you began by telling me that I was
fool-hardy, not really courageous in the decent sense of the word, and
that I was a self-conscious stick and a horribly inhuman and unnatural
object generally--and all because I wouldn't flirt with you--"

His quick laughter interrupted her. She ventured to laugh a little
too--a very little; and that was the charm of her to him--the
clear-eyed, delicate gravity not lightly transformed. But when her
laughter came, it came as such a surprisingly lovely revelation that it
left him charmed and silent.

"I wonder," she said, "if you can be amusing--except when you don't mean
to be."

"If you'll give me a chance to try--"

"Perhaps. I was hardly fair to you in that boat."

"If you knew me in the boat this morning, why did you not say so?"

"Could I admit that I knew you without first pretending I didn't? Hasn't
every woman a Heaven-given right to travel in a circle as the shortest
distance between two points?"

"Certainly; only--"

She shook her head slowly. "There's no use in my telling you who I am,
now, considering that I can't very well escape exposure in the near
future. That might verge on effrontery--and it's horrid enough to be
here with you--in spite of several thousand people tramping about within
elbow touch.... Which reminds me that my own party is probably hunting
for me.... Such a crowd, you know, and so easy to become separated. What
do you suppose they'd think if they suspected the truth?... And the
worst of it is that I cannot afford to do a thing of this sort.... You
don't understand; but you may some day--partly. And then perhaps you'll
think this matter all over and come to a totally different conclusion
concerning my overlooking your recent rudeness and--and my consenting to
speak to you."

"You don't believe for one moment that I could mistake it--"

"It depends upon what sort of a man you really are.... I don't know. I
give you the benefit of all doubts."

She stood silent, looking him candidly in the eyes, then with a gesture
and the slightest shrug, she turned away toward the white road outside.
He was at her elbow in two steps.

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