The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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He went directly toward her; and she, her knees scarcely supporting her,
mounted the last rung of the ladder and seated herself sidewise on the
top of the wall, looking down at him, leaning on one arm.

"It is nice to see you out," she said, as he came to the foot of the
sunny wall.... "Do you really feel as thin as you look?... I had a letter
from your aunt to-day asking an outsider's opinion of your condition,
and now I'll be able to give it.... You do look pathetically thin--but I
shan't tell her that.... If you are tired standing up you may come into
my garden where there are some very agreeable benches.... I would like
to have you come if you care to."

She herself scarcely knew what she was saying; smile, voice, animation
were forced; the havoc of his illness stared at her from his sharp
cheek-bones, thin, bloodless hands, eyes still slow in turning, dull,
heavy-lidded.

"I thought perhaps you would come to call," he said listlessly.

She flushed.

"You _did_ come, once?"

"Yes."

"You did not come again while I was conscious, did you?"

"No."

He passed his thin hand across eyes and forehead.

She folded her arms under her breast and hung far over the
shadow-dappled wall half-screened in young vine-leaves. Over her pink
sun-bonnet and shoulders the hot spring sunshine fell; her face was in
shadow; his, under the full glare of the unclouded sky, every ravage
starkly revealed. And she could not turn her fascinated gaze or crush
out the swelling tenderness that closed her throat to speech and set her
eyes glimmering.

The lids closed, slowly; she leaned there without a word, living through
in the space of a dozen pulse-beats, the agony and sweetness of the
past; then laid her flushed cheek on her arms and opened her eyes,
looking at him in silence.

But he dared not sustain her gaze and took refuge from it in a forced
gaiety, comparing his reappearance to the return of Ulysses, where Dame
Art, that respectable old Haus-Frau, awaited him in a rocking-chair,
chastely preoccupied with her tatting, while rival architects squatted
anxiously around her, urging their claims to a dead man's shoes.

She strove to smile at him and to speak coolly: "Will you come in? I
have finished the vines and presently I'm going to dig. Wait a
moment"--looking behind her and searching with one tentative foot for
the ladder--"I will have to let you in--"

A moment later she met him at the grille and flung it wide, holding out
her hand in welcome with a careless frankness not quite natural--nor was
the nervously vigorous handshake, nor the laughter, light as a breeze,
leaving her breathing fast and unevenly with the hue of excitement
deepening on lip and cheek.

So, the handshaking safely over, and chatting together in a tone louder
and more animated than usual, they walked down the moist gravel path
together--the extreme width of the path apart.

"I think," she said, considering the question, with small head tipped
sideways, "that you had better sit on this bench because the paint is
dry and besides I can talk to you here and dig up these seedling
larkspurs at the same time."

"Don't you want me to do some weeding?"

"With pleasure when you are a little stronger--"

"I'm all right now--"

He stood looking seriously at the bare flower-bed along the wall where
amber shoots of peonies were feathering out into palmate grace, and
older larkspurs had pushed up into fringed mounds of green foliage.

She had knelt down on the bed's edge, trowel in hand, pink sun-bonnet
fallen back neglected; and with blade and gloved fingers she began
transferring the irresponsible larkspur seedlings to the confines of
their proper spheres, patting each frail little plant into place
caressingly.

And he was thinking of her as he had last seen her--on her knees at the
edge of another bed, her hair fallen unheeded as her sun-bonnet hung
now, and the small hands clasping, twisting, very busy with their
agony--as busy as her gloved fingers were now, restlessly in motion
among the thickets of living green.

"Tell me," she said, not looking back over her shoulder, "it must be
heavenly to be out of doors again."

"It _is_ rather pleasant," he assented.

"Did you--they said you had dreadful visions. Did you?"

He laughed. "Some of them were absurd, Shiela; the most abominably
grotesque creatures came swarming and crowding around the bed--faces
without bodies--creatures that grew while I looked at them, swelling to
gigantic proportions--Oh, it was a merry carnival--"

Neither spoke. Her back was toward him as she knelt there very much
occupied with her straying seedlings in the cool shade of the wall.

Jonquils in heavy golden patches stretched away into sun-flecked
perspective broken by the cool silver-green of iris thickets and the
white star-clusters of narcissus nodding under sprays of bleeding-heart.

The air was sweet with the scent of late apple-bloom and lilac--and
Hamil, brooding there on his bench in the sun, clasped his thin hands
over his walking-stick and bent his head to the fragrant memories of
Calypso's own perfume--the lilac-odour of China-berry in bloom, under
the Southern stars.

He drew his breath sharply, raising his head--because this sort of thing
would not do to begin life with again.

"How is Louis?" he asked in a pleasantly deliberate voice.

The thing had to be said sooner or later. They both knew that. It was
over now, with no sign of effort, nothing in his voice or manner to
betray him. Fortunately for him her face was turned away--fortunately
for her, too.

There was a few moments' silence; the trowel, driven abruptly into the
earth to the hilt, served as a prop for her clinched hand.

"I think--Louis--is very well," she said.

"He is remaining permanently with Mr. Portlaw?"

"I think so."

"I hope it will be agreeable for you--both."

"It is a very beautiful country." She rose to her slender, graceful
height and surveyed her work: "A pretty country, a pretty house and
garden," she said steadily. "After all, you know, that is the main thing
in this world."

"What?"

"Why, an agreeable environment; isn't it?"

She turned smilingly, walked to the bench and seated herself.

"Your environment promises to be a little lonely at times," he ventured.

"Oh, yes. But I rather like it, when it's not over-populated. There will
be a great deal for me to do in my garden--teaching young plants
self-control."

"Gardens freeze up, Shiela."

"Yes, that is true."

"But you'll have good shooting--"

"I will never again draw trigger on any living thing!"

"What? The girl who--"

"No girl, now--a woman who can never again bring herself to inflict
death."

"Why?"

"I know better now."

"You rather astonish me?" he said, pretending amusement.

She sat very still, thoughtful eyes roaming, then rested her chin on her
hand, dropping one knee over the other to support her elbow. And he saw
the sensitive mouth droop a little, and the white lids drooping too
until the lashes rested on the bloom of the curved cheek. So he had seen
her, often, silent, absent-minded, thoughts astray amid some blessed
day-dream in that golden fable they had lived--and died in.

She said, as though to herself: "How can a woman slay?... I think those
who have ever been victims of pain never desire to inflict it again on
any living thing."

She looked up humbly, searching his face.

"You know it has become such a dreadful thing to me--the responsibility
for pain and death.... It is horrible for humanity to usurp such a
power--to dare interfere with life--to mar it, end it!... Children do
not understand. I was nothing more a few months ago. To my intelligence
the shallow arguments of those takers of life called sportsmen was
sufficient. I supposed that because almost all the little children of
the wild were doomed to die by violence, sooner or later, that the
quicker death I offered was pardonable on the score of mercy." ... She
shook her head. "Why death and pain exist, I do not know; He who deals
them must know why."

He said, surprised at her seriousness: "Right or wrong, a matter of
taste cannot be argued--"

"A matter of taste! Every fibre of me rebels at the thought of death--of
inflicting it on anything. God knows how I could have done it when I had
so much of happiness myself!" She swung around toward him:

"Sooner or later what remains to say between us must be said, Garry. I
think the time is now--here in my garden--in the clear daylight of the
young summer.... You have that last letter of my girlhood?"

"I burned it."

"I have every letter you ever wrote me. They are in my desk upstairs.
The desk is not locked."

"Had you not better destroy them?"

"Why?"

"As you wish," he said, looking at the ground.

"One keeps the letters of the dead," she said; "your youth and
mine"--she made a little gesture downward as though smoothing a
grave--daintily.

They were very unwise, sitting there in the sunshine side by side,
tremendously impressed with the catastrophe of life and with each
other--still young enough to be in earnest, to take life and each other
with that awesome finality which is the dread privilege of youth.

She spoke with conviction of the mockery of life, of wisdom and its
sadness; he looked upon the world in all the serious disillusion of
youth, and saw it strewn with the fragments of their wrecked happiness.

They were very emotional, very unhappy, very, very much in love; but the
truly pathetic part of it all lay in her innocent conviction that a
marriage witnessed by the world was a sanctuary within the circle of
which neither she nor he had any reason to fear each other or
themselves.

The thing was done; hope slain. They, the mourners, might now meet in
safety to talk together over the dead--suffer together among the graves
of common memories, sadly tracing, reverently marking with epitaphs
appropriate the tombs which held the dead days of their youth.

Youth believes; Age is the sceptic. So they did not know that, as nature
abhors a vacuum, youth cannot long tolerate the vacuity of grief. Rose
vines, cut to the roots, climb the higher. No checking ever killed a
passion. Just now her inexperience was driving her into platitudes.

"Dear Garry," she said gently, "it is such happiness to talk to you like
this; to know that you understand."

There is a regulation forbidding prisoners to converse upon the subject
of their misdemeanours, but neither he nor she seemed to be aware of it.

Moreover, she was truly convinced that no nun in cloister was as
hopelessly certain of safety from world and flesh and devil as was her
heart and its meditations, under the aegis of admitted wedlock.

She looked down at the ring she wore, and a faint shiver passed over
her.

"You are going to Mrs. Ascott?"

"Yes, to make her a Trianon and a smirking little park. I can't quarrel
with my bread and butter, but I wish people would let these woods
alone."

She sat very still and thoughtful, hands clasped on her knee.

"So you are going to Mrs. Ascott," she repeated. And, still thoughtful:
"I am so fond of Alida Ascott.... She is very pretty, isn't she?"

"Very," he said absently.

"Don't you think so?"--warmly.

"I never met her but once."

She was considering him, the knuckle of one forefinger resting against
her chin in an almost childish attitude of thoughtful perplexity.

"How long are you to remain there, Garry?"

"Where?"--coming out of abstraction.

"There--at Mrs. Ascott's?"

"Oh, I don't know--a month, I suppose."

"Not longer?"

"I can't tell, Shiela."

Young Mrs. Malcourt fell silent, eyes on the ground, one knee loosely
crossed over the other, and her small foot swinging gently above its
blue shadow on the gravel.

Some details in the eternal scheme of things were troubling her already;
for one, the liberty of this man to come and go at will; and the dawning
perception of her own chaining.

It was curious, too, to be sitting here so idly beside him, and realise
that she had belonged to him so absolutely--remembering the thousand
thrilling intimacies that bound them immortally together--and now to be
actually so isolated, so beyond his reach, so alone, so miserably
certain of her soul's safety!... And now, for the first time, she missed
the pleasures of fear--the exquisite trepidation that lay in
unsafety--the blessed thrill of peril warning her to avoid his eyes, his
touch, his--lips.

She glanced uneasily at him, a slow side gaze; and met his eyes.

Her heart had begun beating faster; a glow grew in her veins; she closed
her eyes, sitting there surprised--not yet frightened.

Time throbbed on; rigid, motionless, she endured the pulsing silence
while the blood quickened till body and limbs seemed burning; and
suddenly, from heart to throat the tension tightened as though a cry,
echoing within her, was being strangled.

"Perhaps you had better--go--" she managed to say.

"Why?"

She looked down at her restless fingers interlacing, too confused to be
actually afraid of herself or him.

What was there to fear? What occult uneasiness was haunting them? Where
might lie any peril, now? How could the battle begin again when all was
quiet along the firing line--quiet with the quiet of death? Do dead
memories surge up into furies? Can dead hopes burn again? Is there any
resurrection for the insurgent passions of the past laid for ever under
the ban of wedlock? The fear within her turned to impatience--to a proud
incredulity.

And now she felt the calm reaction as though, unbidden, an ugly dream,
passing, had shadowed her unawakened senses for a moment, and passed
away.

As long as they lived there was nothing to be done. Endurance could
cease only with death. What was there to fear? She asked herself,
waiting half contemptuously for an answer. But her unknown self had now
subsided into the obscurity from whence it rose. The Phantom of the
Future was laid.

CHAPTER XXIII

A CAPITULATION

As Hamil left the garden Malcourt sauntered into view, halted, then came
forward.

"I'm glad to see you," he said pleasantly.

"Thank you."

Neither offered to shake hands; Malcourt, lightly formal, spoke of
Hamil's illness in a few words, using that excellent taste which was at
his command when he chose to employ it. He expressed his pleasure in
Hamil's recovery, and said that he was ready at any time to take up the
unfinished details of Portlaw's business, agreeing with Hamil that there
remained very little to talk over.

"The main thing, of course, is to squelch William's last hopes of any
Rhine castles," continued Malcourt, laughing. "If you feel like it
to-day I'll bring over the plans as you sketched them."

"In a day or two," nodded Hamil.

"Or perhaps you will lunch with m--with us, and you and I can go over
the things comfortably."

But he saw by the scarcely perceptible change in Hamil's face that there
were to be no such relations between them, informal or otherwise; and he
went on quietly, closing his own suggestion:

"Or, if you like, we'll get Portlaw some morning after his breakfast,
and end the whole matter by laying down the law to him."

"That would be perfectly agreeable to me," said Hamil. He spoke as
though fatigued, and he looked it as he moved toward his house, using
his walking-stick. Malcourt accompanied him to the road.

"Hamil," he said coolly, "may I suggest something?"

The other turned an expressionless face toward him: "What do you wish to
suggest?"

"That, some day when you feel physically better, I'd like to go over one
or two matters with you--privately--"

"What matters?"

"They concern you and myself."

"I know of no private matters which concern you and myself--or are ever
likely to."

Malcourt's face darkened. "I think I warned you once that one day you
would misunderstand my friendship for you."

Hamil straightened up, looking him coldly in the eye.

"Malcourt," he said, "there is no reason for the slightest pretence
between us. I don't like you; I don't dislike you; I simply don't take
you into consideration at all. The accident of your intrusion into a
woman's life is not going to make any more difference to me than it has
already made, nor can it affect my complete liberty and freedom to do
and say what I choose."

"I am not sure that I understand you, Hamil."

"Well, you can certainly understand this: that my regard for--Mrs.
Malcourt--does not extend to you; that it is neither modified nor
hampered by the fact that you happen to exist, or that she now bears
your name."

Malcourt's face had lost its colour. He began slowly:

"There is no reason, I think--"

"I don't care what you think!" said Hamil. "It is not of any consequence
to me, nor will it govern me in any manner." He made a contemptuous
gesture toward the garden. "Those flower-beds and gravel walks in
there--I don't know whether they belong to you or to Mrs. Malcourt or to
Portlaw; and I don't care. The accidental ownership of property will not
prevent my entering it; but its ownership by you would prevent my
accepting your personal invitation to use it or even enter it. And now,
perhaps, you understand."

Malcourt, very white, nodded:

"It is so useless," he said--"all this bitterness. You don't know what
you're saying.... But I suppose you can't help it.... It always has been
that way; things go to smash if I try to do anything.... Well, Hamil,
we'll go on in your own fashion, if we must--for a while. But"--and he
laughed mirthlessly--"if it ends in a little shooting--you mustn't blame
me!"

Hamil surveyed him in cold displeasure.

"I always expected you'd find your level," he observed.

"Yes, I'll find it," mused Malcourt, "as soon as I know what it ought to
be. Under pressure it is difficult to ascertain such things; one's true
level may be higher or lower. My father and I have often discussed this
matter--and the ethics of straight shooting."

Hamil's eyes narrowed.

"If you mean that as a threat"--he began contemptuously; but Malcourt,
who had suddenly assumed that curious listening attitude, raised his
hand impatiently, as though silencing interruption.

And long after Hamil had turned on his heel and gone, he stood there,
graceful head lowered a little and partly turned as though poetically
appreciative of the soft twittering music which the bluebirds were
making among the falling apple-bloom.

Then, slowly, not noticing Hamil's departure, he retraced his steps
through the garden, head slightly inclined, as though to catch the
murmur of some invisible companion accompanying him. Once or twice he
nodded, a strange smile creeping over his face; once his lips moved as
though asking a question; no sound came from them, but apparently he had
his answer, for he nodded assent, halted, drew a deep breath, and looked
upward.

"We can try that," he said aloud in his naturally pleasant voice; and,
entering the house, went upstairs to his wife's apartments.

Shiela's maid answered his knock; a moment later, Shiela herself, gowned
for the afternoon, came to the door, and her maid retired.

"Do you mind my stepping in a moment?" he asked.

She glanced back into her own bedroom, closed the door, and led the way
to the small living-room at the other end of the house.

"Where's that maid of yours?" he asked.

"Sewing in my dressing-room. Shall I send her downstairs?"

"Yes; it's better."

So Shiela went away and returned shortly saying that her maid had gone;
and then, with a questioning gesture to her husband, she seated herself
by the open window and looked out into the sunshine, waiting for him to
speak.

"Do you know," he said abruptly, "what saved Cardross, Carrick & Co.
from going to the wall?"

"What?" The quick, crisp question sounded like the crack of a tiny whip.

He looked at her, languidly amused.

"You knew there was a panic?" he asked.

"Yes, of course."

"You knew that your father and Mr. Carrick were worried?"

"Yes."

"You didn't realise they were in bad shape?"

"Not--very. Were they?"

"That they needed money, and that they couldn't go out into the market
and borrow it because nobody would lend any money to anybody?"

"I do not understand such details."

"Details? Ah--yes, quite so.... Then you were not aware that a run was
threatened on the Shoshone Securities Company and certain affiliated
banks?"

"Yes--but I did not suppose it meant anything alarming."

"And you didn't understand that your father and brother-in-law could not
convert their securities into the ready cash they needed to meet their
obligations--did you?"

"I do not understand details, Louis.... No."

"Or that they were desperate?"

Her face altered pitifully.

"On the edge of bankruptcy?" he went on.

"_What_!"

"Then," he said deliberately, "you don't know what helped them--what
tided them over those two days--what pulled them through by the slimmest
margin that ever saved the credit of anybody."

"Not--my money?"

"Yes; your money."

"Is it true, Louis?"

"Absolutely."

She leaned her head on her hand and sat gazing out of the open window.
There were tears very near her eyes, but the lids closed and not one
fell or even wet the thick lashes resting on her cheeks.

"I supposed it would please you to know what you have done."

The face she turned toward him was wonderful in its radiance.

She said: "I have never been as happy in all my life, I think. Thank you
for telling me. I needed just--that."

He studied her for a moment, nimble wits at work. Then:

"Has your father--and the others--in their letters, said anything about
it to you?"

"Yes, father has. He did not say matters had been desperate."

"I suppose he does not dare commit such a thing to paper--yet.... _You_
do not burn your letters," he added blandly.

"I have no reason to."

"It might save servants' gossip."

"What gossip?"--in cold surprise.

"There's a desk full of Hamil's letters upstairs, judging from the
writing on the envelopes." He added with a smile: "Although I don't
pry, some servants do. And if there is anything in those letters you do
not care to have discussed below stairs, you ought either to lock them
up or destroy them."

Her face was burning hot; but she met his gaze with equanimity, slowly
nodding serene assent to his suggestion.

"Shiela," he said pleasantly, "it looks to me as though what you have
done for your family in that hour of need rather balances all accounts
between you and them."

"What?"

"I say that you are square with them for what they have done in the past
for you."

She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean, Louis."

He said patiently: "You had nothing to give but your fortune, and you
gave it."

"Yes."

"Which settles your obligations toward them--puts them so deeply for
ever in your debt that--" He hesitated, considering the chances, then,
seriously persuasive:

"They are now in _your_ debt, Shiela. They have sufficient proof of your
unselfish affection for them to stand a temporary little shock. Why
don't you administer it?"

"What shock?"--in an altered voice.

"Your divorce."

"I thought you were meaning that."

"I do mean it. You ought to have your freedom; you are ruining your own
life and Hamil's, and--and--"

"Yours?"

"Let that go," he said almost savagely; "I can always get along. But I
want you to have your freedom to marry that damned fool, Hamil."

The quick blood stung her face under his sudden blunt brutality.

"You think that because I returned a little money to my family, it
entitles me to publicly disgrace them?"

Malcourt's patience was fast going.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Shiela, shed your swaddling clothes and act like
something adult. Is there any reason why two people situated as we are
cannot discuss sensibly some method of mitigating our misfortune? I'll
do anything you say in the matter. Divorce is a good thing sometimes.
This is one of the times, and I'll give you every reason for a
successful suit against me--"

She rose, cheeks aflame, and in her eyes scorn ungovernable.

He rose too, exasperated.

"You won't consider it?" he asked harshly.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not coward enough to ask others to bear the consequences of
my own folly and yours!"

"You little fool," he said, "do you think your family would let you
endure me for one second if they knew how you felt? Or what I am likely
to do at any moment?"

She stood, without replying, plainly waiting for him to leave the room
and her apartments. All her colour had fled.

"You know," he said, with an ugly glimmer in his eyes, "I need not
continue this appeal to your common sense, if you haven't got any; I
can force you to a choice."

"What choice?"--in leisurely contempt.

He hesitated; then, insolently: "Your choice between--honest wifehood
and honest divorce."

For a moment she could not comprehend: suddenly her hands contracted and
clinched as the crimson wave stained her from throat to brow. But in her
eyes was terror unutterable.

"I--I beg--your pardon," he stammered. "I did not mean to frighten
you--"

But at his first word she clapped both hands over her ears, staring at
him in horror--backing away from him, shrinking flat against the wall.

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