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The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"Confound it! I am not threatening you," he said, raising his voice; but
she would not hear another word--he saw that now--and, with a shrug, he
walked past her, patient once more, outwardly polite, inwardly bitterly
amused, as he heard the key snap in the door behind him.

Standing in his own office on the floor below, he glanced vacantly
around him. After a moment he said aloud, as though to somebody in the
room: "Well, I tried it. But that is not the way."

Later, young Mrs. Malcourt, passing, saw him seated at his desk, head
bent as though listening to something interesting. But there was nobody
else in the office.

When at last he roused himself the afternoon sun was shining level in
the west; long rosy beams struck through the woods turning the silver
stems of the birches pink.

On the footbridge spanning the meadow brook he saw his wife and Hamil
leaning over the hand-rail, shoulder almost touching shoulder; and he
went to the window and stood intently observing them.

They seemed to be conversing very earnestly; once she threw back her
pretty head and laughed unrestrainedly, and the clear sound of it
floated up to him through the late sunshine; and once she shook her head
emphatically, and once he saw her lay her hand on Hamil's arm--an
impulsive gesture, as though to enforce her words, but it was more like
a caress.

A tinge of malice altered Malcourt's smile as he watched them; the
stiffening grin twitched at his cheeks.

"Now I wonder," he thought to himself, "whether it is the right way
after all!... I don't think I'll threaten her again with--alternatives.
There's no telling what a fool might do in a panic." Then, as though the
spectacle bored him, he yawned, stretched his arms and back gracefully,
turned and touched the button that summoned his servant.

"Order the horses and pack as usual, Simmons," he said with another
yawn. "I'm going to New York. Isn't Mr. Portlaw here yet?"

"No, sir."

"Did you say he went away on horseback?"

"Yes, sir, this morning."

"And you don't know where?"

"No, sir. Mr. Portlaw took the South Road."

Malcourt grinned again, perfectly certain, now, of Portlaw's
destination; and thinking to himself that unless his fatuous employer
had been landed in a ditch somewhere, en route, he was by this time
returning from Pride's Fall with considerable respect for Mrs. Ascott.

* * * * *

As a matter of fact, Portlaw had already started on his way back. Mrs.
Ascott was not at Pride's Hall--her house--when he presented himself at
the door. Her servant, evidently instructed, did not know where Mrs.
Ascott and Miss Palliser had gone or when they might return.

So Portlaw betook himself heavily to the village inn, where he insulted
his astonished stomach with a noonday dinner, and found the hard wooden
chairs exceedingly unpleasant.

About five o'clock he got into his saddle with an unfeigned groan, and
out of it again at Mrs. Ascott's door. They told him there that Mrs.
Ascott was not at home.

Whether this might be the conventional manner of informing him that she
declined to receive him, or whether she really was out, he had no means
of knowing; so he left his cards for Mrs. Ascott and Miss Palliser, also
the note which young Mrs. Malcourt had given him; clambered once more up
the side of his horse, suppressing his groans until out of hearing and
well on his way toward the fatal boundary.


In the late afternoon, sky and water had turned to a golden rose hue;
clouds of gnats danced madly over meadow pools, calm mirrors of the
sunset, save when a trout sprang quivering, a dark, slim crescent
against the light, falling back with a mellow splash that set the pool
rocking.

At gaze a deer looked at him from sedge, furry ears forward; stamped,
winded him, and, not frightened very much, trotted into the dwarf
willows, halting once or twice to look around.

As he advanced, his horse splashing through the flooded land
fetlock-deep in water, green herons flapped upward, protesting harshly,
circled overhead with leisurely wing-beats, and settled on some dead
limb, thin, strange shapes against the deepening orange of the western
heavens.

Portlaw, sitting his saddle gingerly, patronized nature askance; and he
saw across the flooded meadow where the river sand had piled its
smothering blanket--which phenomenon he was guiltily aware was due to
him.

Everywhere were signs of the late overflow--raw new gravel channels for
Painted Creek; river willows bent low where the flood had winnowed;
piles of driftwood jammed here and there; a single stone pier stemming
mid-stream, ancient floor and cover gone. More of his work--or the
consequences of it--this desolation; from which, under his horse's feet,
rose a hawk, flapping, furious, a half-drowned snake dangling from the
talon-clutch.

"Ugh!" muttered Portlaw, bringing his startled horse under discipline;
then forged forward across the drowned lands, sorry for his work, sorry
for his obstinacy, sorrier for himself; for Portlaw, in some matters was
illogically parsimonious; and it irked him dreadfully to realise how
utterly indefensible were his actions and how much they promised to cost
him.

"Unless," he thought cannily to himself, "I can fix it up with her--for
old friendship's sake--bah!--doing the regretful sinner business--"

As the horse thrashed out of the drowned lands up into the flat plateau
where acres of alders, their tops level as a trimmed hedge, stretched
away in an even, green sea, a distant, rapping sound struck his ear,
sharp, regular as the tree-tapping of a cock-o'-the-woods.

Indifferently convinced that the great, noisy woodpecker was the cause
of the racket, he rode on toward the hard-wood ridge dominating this
plateau where his guests, last season, had shot woodcock--one of the
charges in the suit against him.

"The thing to do," he ruminated, "is to throw myself gracefully on her
mercy. Women like to have a chance to forgive you; Louis says so, and he
ought to know. What a devilishly noisy woodpecker!"

And, looking up, he drew bridle sharply.

For there, on the wood's edge, stood a familiar gray mare, and in the
saddle, astride, sat Alida Ascott, busily hammering tacks into a
trespass notice printed on white muslin, and attached to the trunk of a
big maple-tree.

So absorbed was she in her hammering that at first she neither heard nor
saw Portlaw when he finally ventured to advance; and when she did she
dropped the tack hammer in her astonishment.

He dismounted, with pain, to pick it up, presented it, face wreathed in
a series of appealing smiles, then, managing to scale the side of his
horse again, settled himself as comfortably as possible for the
impending conflict.

But Alida Ascott, in her boyish riding breeches and deep-skirted coat,
merely nodded her thanks, took hold of the hammer firmly, and drove in
more tacks, paying no further attention to William Van Beuren Portlaw
and his heart-rending smiles.

It was very embarrassing; he sidled his horse around so that he might
catch a glimpse of her profile. The view he obtained was not
encouraging.

"Alida," he ventured plaintively.

"Mr. Portlaw!"--so suddenly swinging on him that he lost all countenance
and blurted out:

"I--I only want to make amends and be friends."

"I expect you to make amends," she said in a significantly quiet voice,
which chilled him with the menace of damages unlimited. And even in his
perturbation he saw at once that it would never do to have a backwoods
jury look upon the fascinating countenance of this young plaintiff.

"Alida," he said sorrowfully, "I am beginning to see things in a clearer
light."

"I think that light will grow very much clearer, Mr. Portlaw."

He repressed a shudder, and tried to look reproachful, but she seemed to
be very hard-hearted, for she turned once more to her hammering.

"Alida!"

"What?"--continuing to drive tacks.

"After all these years of friendship it--it is perfectly painful for me
to contemplate a possible lawsuit--"

"It will be more painful to contemplate an actual one, Mr. Portlaw."

"Alida, do you really mean that you--my neighbour and friend--are going
to press this unnatural complaint?"

"I certainly do."

Portlaw shook his head violently, and passed his gloved hand over his
eyes as though to rouse himself from a distressing dream; all of which
expressive pantomime was lost on Mrs. Ascott, who was busy driving
tacks.

"I simply cannot credit my senses," he said mournfully.

"You ought to try; it will be still more difficult later," she observed,
backing her horse so that she might inspect her handiwork from the
proper point of view.

Portlaw looked askance at the sign. It warned people not to shoot, fish,
cut trees, dam streams, or build fires under penalty of the law; and was
signed, "Alida Ascott."

"You didn't have any up before, did you?" he asked innocently.

"By advice of counsel I think I had better not reply, Mr. Portlaw. But I
believe that point will be brought out by my lawyers--unless"--with a
brilliant smile--"your own counsel sees fit to discuss it."

Portlaw was convinced that his hair was stirring under his cap. He was
horribly afraid of the law.

"See here, Alida," he said, assuming the bluff rough-diamond front which
the alarm in his eyes made foolish, "I want to settle this little
difference and be friends with you again. I was wrong; I admit it.... Of
course I might very easily defend such a suit--"

"But, of course"--serenely undeceived--"as you admit you are in the
wrong you will scarcely venture to defend such a suit. _Your_ lawyers
ought to forbid _you_ to talk about this case, particularly"--with a
demure smile--"to the plaintiff."

"Alida," he said, "I am determined to remain your friend. You may do
what you will, say what you wish, yes, even use my own words against me,
but"--and virtue fairly exuded from every perspiring pore--"I will not
retaliate!"

"I'm afraid you can't, William," she said softly.

"Won't you--forgive?" he asked in a melting voice; but his eyes were
round with apprehension.

"There are some things that no woman can overlook," she said.

"I'll send my men down to fix that bridge--"

"Bridges can be mended; I was not speaking of the bridge."

"You mean those sheep--"

"No, Mr. Portlaw."

"Well, there's a lot--I mean that some little sand has been washed over
your meadow--"

"Good night," she said, turning her horse's head.

"Isn't it the sand, Alida?" he pleaded. "You surely will forgive that
timber-cutting--and the shooting of a few migratory birds--"

"Good night," touching her gray mare forward to where he was awkwardly
blocking the wood-path.... "Do you mind moving a trifle, Mr. Portlaw?"

"About--ah--the--down there, you know, at Palm Beach," he stammered, "at
that accursed lawn-party--"

"Yes?" She smiled but her eyes harboured lightning.

"It was so hot in Florida--you know how infernally hot it was, don't
you, Alida?" he asked beseechingly. "I scarcely dared leave the Beach
Club."

"Well?"

"I--I thought I'd just m-m-mention it. That's why I didn't call on
you--I was afraid of sunstroke--"

"What!" she exclaimed, astonished at his stuttering audacity.

He knew he was absurd, but it was all he could think of. She gave him
time enough to realise the pitiable spectacle he was making of himself,
sitting her horse motionless, pretty eyes bent on his--an almost
faultless though slight figure, smooth as a girl's yet faintly instinct
with that charm of ripened adolescence just short of maturity.

And, slowly, under her clear gaze, a confused comprehension began to
stir in him--at first only a sort of chagrin, then something more--a
consciousness of his own heaviness of intellect and grossness of
figure--the fatness of mind and body which had developed so rapidly
within the last two years.

There she sat, as slim and pretty and fresh as ever; and only two years
ago he had been mentally and physically active enough to find vigorous
amusement in her company. Malcourt's stinging words concerning his
bodily unloveliness and self-centred inertia came into his mind; and a
slow blush deepened the colour in his heavy face.

What vanity he had reckoned on had deserted him along with any hope of
compromising a case only too palpably against him. And yet, through the
rudiments of better feeling awakening within him, the instinct of thrift
still coloured his ideas a little.

"I'm dead wrong, Alida. We might just as well save fees and costs and go
over the damages together.... I'll pay them. I ought to, anyway. I
suppose I don't usually do what I ought. Malcourt says I don't--said so
very severely--very mortifyingly the other day. So--if you'll get him or
your own men to decide on the amount--"

"Do you think the amount matters?"

"Oh, of course it's principle; very proper of you to stand on your
dignity--"

"I am not standing on it now; I am listening to your utter
misapprehension of me and my motives.... I don't care for any--damages."

"It is perfectly proper for you to claim them, if," he added
cautiously, "they are within reason--"

"Mr. Portlaw!"

"What?" he asked, alarmed.

"I would not touch a penny! I meant to give it to the schools,
here--whatever I recovered.... Your misunderstanding of me is
abominable!"

He hung his head, heavy-witted, confused as a stupid schoolboy, feeling,
helplessly, his clumsiness of mind and body.

Something of this may have been perceptible to her--may have softened
her ideas concerning him--ideas which had accumulated bitterness during
the year of his misbehaviour and selfish neglect. Her instinct divined
in his apparently sullen attitude the slow intelligence and mental
perturbation of a wilful, selfish boy made stupid through idleness and
self-indulgence. Even what had been clean-cut, attractive, in his face
and figure was being marred and coarsened by his slothful habits to an
extent that secretly dismayed her; for she had always thought him very
handsome; and, with that natural perversity of selection, finding in him
a perfect foil to her own character, had been seriously inclined to like
him.

Attractions begin in that way, sometimes, where the gentler is the
stronger, the frailer, the dominant character; and the root is in the
feminine instinct to care for, develop, and make the most of what
palpably needs a protectorate.

Without comprehending her own instinct, Mrs. Ascott had found the
preliminary moulding of Portlaw an agreeable diversion; had rather taken
for granted that she was doing him good; and was correspondingly annoyed
when he parted his moorings and started drifting aimlessly as a
derelict scow awash, floundering seaward without further notice of the
trim little tug standing by and amiably ready to act as convoy.


Now, sitting her saddle in silence she surveyed him, striving to
understand him--his recent indifference, his deterioration, the present
figure he was cutting. And it seemed to her a trifle sad that he had no
one to tell him a few wholesome truths.

"Mr. Portlaw," she said, "do you know that you have been exceedingly
rude to me?"

"Yes, I--do know it."

"Why?" she asked simply.

"I don't know."

"Didn't you care for our friendship? Didn't it amuse and interest you?
How could you have done the things you did--in the way you did?... If
you had asked my permission to build a dozen dams I'd have given it.
Didn't you know it? But my self-respect protested when you so cynically
ignored me--"

"I'm a beast all right," he muttered.

She gazed at him, softened, even faintly amused at his repentant bad-boy
attitude.

"Do you want me to forgive you, Mr. Portlaw?"

"Yes--but you oughtn't."

"That is quite true.... Turn your horse and ride back with me. I'm going
to find out exactly how repentant you really are.... If you pass a
decent examination you may dine with Miss Palliser, Mr. Wayward, and me.
It's too late anyway to return through the forest.... I'll send you over
in the motor."

And as they wheeled and walked their horses forward through the dusk,
she said impulsively:

"We have four for Bridge if you like."

"Alida," he said sincerely, "you _are_ a corker."

She looked up demurely. What she could see to interest her in this lump
of a man Heaven alone knew, but a hint of the old half-patient,
half-amused liking for him and his slow wits began to flicker once more.
De gustibus--alas!




CHAPTER XXIV

THE SCHOOL OF THE RECRUIT


When Portlaw arrived home late that evening there existed within his
somewhat ordinary intellect a sense of triumph. The weak usually
experience it at the beginning and through every step of their own
subjugation.

Malcourt, having decided to take an express which stopped on signal at
six in the morning, was reading as usual before the empty fireplace; and
at the first glance he suspected what had begun to happen to Portlaw.

The latter bustled about the room with an air of more or less
importance, sorted his letters, fussed with a newspaper; and every now
and then Malcourt, glancing up, caught Portlaw's eyes peeping
triumphantly around corners at him.

"You've been riding?" he said, much amused. "Are you stiff?"

"A trifle," replied the other carelessly. "I must keep it up. Really,
you know, I've rather neglected the horses lately."

"Rather. So you're taking up riding again?"

Portlaw nodded: "I've come to the conclusion that I need exercise."

Malcourt, who had been urging him for years to exercise, nodded approval
as though the suggestion were a brand-new one.

"Yes," said Portlaw, "I shall ride, I think, every day. I intend to do
a good bit of tramping, too. It's excellent for the liver, Louis."

At this piece of inspired information Malcourt assumed an expression of
deepest interest, but hoped Portlaw might not overdo it.

"I'm going to diet, too," observed Portlaw, watching the effect of this
astounding statement on his superintendent. "My theory is that we all
eat too much."

"Don't do anything Spartan," said Malcourt warningly; "a man at your
time of life--"

"My--what! Confound it, Louis, I'm well this side of forty!"

"Yes, perhaps; but when a man reaches your age there is not much left
for him but the happiness of overeating--"

"What d'y' mean?"

"Nothing; only as he's out of the race with younger men as far as a
pretty woman is concerned--"

"Who's out!" demanded Portlaw, red in the face. "What sort of men do you
suppose interest women? Broilers? I always thought your knowledge of
women was superficial; now I know it. And you don't know everything
about everything else, either--about summonses and lawsuits, for
example." And he cast an exultant look at his superintendent.

But Malcourt let him tell the news in his own way; and he did, imparting
it in bits with naive enjoyment, apparently utterly unconscious that he
was doing exactly what his superintendent had told him to do.

"You _are_ a diplomat, aren't you?" said Malcourt with a weary smile.

"A little, a little," admitted Portlaw modestly. "I merely mentioned
these things--" He waved his hand to check any possible eulogy of
himself from Malcourt. "I'll merely say this: that when I make up my
mind to settle anything--" He waved his hand again, condescendingly.

"That man," thought Malcourt, "will be done for in a year. Any woman
could have had him; the deuce of it was to find one who'd take him. I
think she's found."

And looking up blandly:

"Porty, old fellow, you're really rather past the marrying age--"

"I'll do what I please!" shouted Portlaw, exasperated.

Malcourt had two ways of making Portlaw do a thing; one was to tell him
not to, the other the reverse. He always ended by doing it anyway; but
the quicker result was obtained by the first method.

So Malcourt went to New York next morning convinced that Portlaw's
bachelor days were numbered; aware, also, that as soon as Mrs. Ascott
took the helm his own tenure of office would promptly expire. He wished
it to expire, easily, agreeably, naturally; and that is why he had
chosen to shove Portlaw in the general direction of the hymeneal altar.

He did not care very much for Portlaw--scarcely enough to avoid hurting
his feelings by abandoning him. But now he had arranged it so that to
all appearances the abandoning would be done by Portlaw, inspired by the
stronger mind of Mrs. Ascott. It had been easy and rather amusing to
arrange; it saved wordy and endless disputes with Portlaw; it would give
him a longed-for release from an occupation he had come to hate.

Malcourt was tired. He wanted a year of freedom from dependence,
surcease of responsibility--a year to roam where he wished, foregather
with whom he pleased, haunt the places congenial to him, come and go
unhampered; a year of it--only one year. What remained for him to do
after the year had expired he thought he understood; yes, he was
practically certain--had always been.

But first must come that wonderful year he had planned--or, if he tired
of the pleasure sooner, then, as the caprice stirred him, he would do
what he had planned to do ever since his father died. The details only
remained to be settled.

For Malcourt, with all the contradictions in his character, all his
cynicism, effrontery, ruthlessness, preferred to do things in a manner
calculated to spare the prejudices of others; and if there was a way to
accomplish a thing without hurting people, he usually took the trouble
to do it in that way. If not, he did it anyway.

And now, at last, he saw before him the beginning of that curious year
for which he had so long waited; and, concerning the closing details of
which, he had pondered so often with his dark, handsome head lowered and
slightly turned, listening, always listening.

But nothing of this had he spoken of to his wife. It was not necessary.
He had a year in which to live in a certain manner and do a certain
thing; and it was going to amuse him to do it in a way which would harm
nobody.

The year promised to be an interesting one, to judge from all signs. For
one item his sister, Lady Tressilvain, was impending from Paris--also
his brother-in-law--complicating the humour of the visitation.
Malcourt's marriage to an heiress was the perfectly obvious incentive
of the visit. And when they wrote that they were coming to New York, it
amused Malcourt exceedingly to invite them to Luckless Lake. But he said
nothing about it to Portlaw or his wife.

Then, for another thing, the regeneration and development, ethically and
artistically, of Dolly Wilming amused him. He wanted to be near enough
to watch it--without, however, any real faith in its continuation.

And, also, there was Miss Suydam. Her development would not be quite as
agreeable to witness; process of disillusioning her, little by little,
until he had undermined himself sufficiently to make the final break
with her very easy--for her. Of course it interested him; all intrigue
did where skill was required with women.

And, last of all, yet of supreme importance, he desired leisure,
undisturbed, to study his own cumulative development, to humorously
thwart it, or misunderstand it, or slyly aid it now and then--always
aware of and attentive to that extraneous something which held him so
motionless, at moments, listening attentively as though to a command.

For, from that morning four years ago when, crushed with fatigue, he
strove to keep his vigil beside his father who, toward daybreak, had
been feigning sleep--from that dreadful dawn when, waking with the crash
of the shot in his ears, his blinded gaze beheld the passing of a
soul--he understood that he was no longer his own master.

Not that the occult triad, Chance, Fate, and Destiny ruled; they only
modified his orbit. But from the centre of things Something that ruled
them was pulling him toward it, slowly, steadily, inexorably drawing him
nearer, lessening the circumference of his path, attenuating it,
circumscribing, limiting, controlling. And long since he had learned to
name this thing, undismayed--this one thing remaining in the world in
which his father's son might take a sporting interest.

* * * * *

He had been in New York two weeks, enjoying existence in his own
fashion, untroubled by any demands, questions, or scruples concerning
responsibility, when a passionate letter from Portlaw disturbed the
placid interlude:

"Confound it, Louis, haven't you the common decency to come back
when you know I've had a bunch of people here to be entertained?

"Nobody's heard a peep from you. What on earth do you mean by
this?

"Miss Palliser, Mrs. Ascott, Miss Cardross are here, also
Wayward, and Gray Cardross--which with you and Mrs. Malcourt and
myself solves the Bridge proposition--or would have solved it.
But without warning, yesterday, your sister and brother-in-law
arrived, bag and baggage, and Mrs. Malcourt has given them the
west wing of your house. I believe she was as astonished as I,
but she will not admit it.

"I don't know whether this is some sorry jest of yours--not that
Lady Tressilvain and her noble spouse are unwelcome--but for
Heaven's sake consider Wayward's feelings--cooped up in camp with
his ex-wife! It wasn't a very funny thing to do, Louis; but now
that it's done you can come back and take care of the mess you've
made.

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