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The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"Oh, yes--the irony of formality."

She nodded. "Good night, then, Mr. Hamil. If circumstances permitted it
would have been delightful--this putting off the cloak of convention and
donning motley for a little unconventional misbehaviour with you....
But as it is, it worries me--slightly--as much as the episode and your
opinion are worth."

"I am wondering," he said, "why this little tincture of bitterness
flavours what you say to me?"

"Because I've misbehaved; and so have you. Anyway, now that it's done,
there's scarcely anything I could do to make the situation more flagrant
or less flippant--"

"You don't really think--"

"Certainly. After all is said and done, we _don't_ know each other; here
we are, shamelessly sauntering side by side under the jasmine,
Paul-and-Virginia-like, exchanging subtleties blindfolded. You are you;
I am I; formally, millions of miles apart--temporarily and informally
close together, paralleling each other's course through life for the
span of half an hour--here under the Southern stars.... O Ulysses, truly
that island was inhabited by one, Calypso; but your thrall is to be
briefer than your prototype's. See, now; here is the road; and I release
you to that not impossible she--"

"There is none--"

"There will be. You are very young. Good-bye."

"The confusing part of it to me," he said, smiling, "is to _see_ you
so--so physically youthful with even a hint of almost childish
immaturity!--and then to _hear_ you as you _are_--witty, experienced,
nicely cynical, maturely sure of yourself and--"

"You think me experienced?"

"Yes."

"Sure of myself?"

"Of course; with your cool, amused poise, your absolute
self-possession--and the half-disdainful sword-play of your wit--at my
expense--"

She halted beside the sea-wall, adorably mocking in her exaggerated
gravity.

"At your expense?" she repeated. "Why not? You have cost me something."

"You said--"

"I know what I said: I said that we might become friends. But even so,
you have already cost me something. Tell me"--he began to listen for
this little trick of speech--"how many men do you know who would not
misunderstand what I have done this evening? And--do _you_ understand
it, Mr. Hamil?"

"I think--"

"If you do you are cleverer than I," she said almost listlessly, moving
on again under the royal palms.

"Do you mean that--"

"Yes; that I myself don't entirely understand it. Here, under this
Southern sun, we of the North are in danger of acquiring a sort of
insouciant directness almost primitive. There comes, after a while, a
certain mental as well as physical luxury in relaxation of rule and
precept, permitting us a simplicity which sometimes, I think, becomes
something less harmless. There _is_ luxury in letting go of that live
wire which keeps us all keyed to one conventional monotone in the North.
I let go--for a moment--to-night. _You_ let go when you said 'Calypso.'
You couldn't have said it in New York; I couldn't have heard you,
there.... Alas, Ulysses, I should not have heard you anywhere. But I
did; and I answered.... Say good night to me, now; won't you? We have
not been very wicked, I think."

She offered her hand; smooth and cool it lay for a second in his.

"I can't let you return alone," he ventured.

"If you please, how am I to explain you to--the others?"

And as he said nothing:

"If I were--different--I'd simply tell them the truth. I could afford
to. Besides we'll all know you before very long. Then we'll see--oh,
yes, both of us--whether we have been foolishly wise to become
companions in our indiscretion, or--otherwise.... And don't worry about
my home-arrival. That's my lawn--there where that enormous rubber-banyan
tree straddles across the stars.... Is it not quaint--the tangle of
shrubbery all over jasmine?--and those are royal poincianas, if you
please--and there's a great garden beyond and most delectable orange
groves where you and I and the family and Alonzo will wander and eat
pine-oranges and king-oranges and mandarins and--oh, well! Are you going
to call on Mr. Cardross to-morrow?"

"Yes," he said, "I'll have to see Mr. Cardross at once. And after that,
what am I to do to meet you?"

"I will consider the matter," she said; and bending slightly toward him:
"Am I to be disappointed in you? I don't know, and you can't tell me."
Then, impulsively: "Be generous to me. You are right; I am not very old,
yet. Be nice to me in your thoughts. I have never before done such a
thing as this: I never could again. It is not very dreadful--is it? Will
you think nicely of me?"

He said gaily: "Now you speak as you look, not like a world-worn woman
of thirty wearing the soft, fresh mask of nineteen."

"You have not answered me," she said quietly.

"Answered you, Calypso?"

"Yes; I ask you to be very gentle and fastidious with me in your
thoughts; not even to call me Calypso--in your thoughts."

"What you ask I had given you the first moment we met."

"Then you _may_ call me Calypso--in your thoughts."

"Calypso," he pleaded, "won't you tell me where to find you?"

"Yes; in the house of--Mr. Cardross. This is his house."

She turned and stepped onto the lawn. A mass of scarlet hibiscus hid
her, then she reappeared, a pale shape in the dusk of the
oleander-bordered path.

He listened; the perfume of the oleanders enveloped him; high under the
stars the fronds of a royal palm hung motionless. Then, through the
stillness, very far away, he heard the southern ocean murmuring in its
slumber under a million stars.




CHAPTER IV

RECONNAISSANCE


Hamil awoke early: long before breakfast he was shaved, dressed, and
hungry; but in the hotel late rising appeared to be fashionable, and
through the bewildering maze of halls and corridors nobody was yet astir
except a few children and their maids.

So he sauntered about the acres of floor space from rotunda to music
room, from desk to sun parlour, through the endless carpeted tunnel
leading to the station, and back again, taking his bearings in this
wilderness of runways so profusely embowered with palms and furniture.

In one wide corridor, lined like a street with shops, clerks were
rearranging show windows; and Hamil strolled from the jewellers to the
brilliant but dubious display of an Armenian rug dealer; from a New York
milliner's exhibition, where one or two blond, sleepy-eyed young women
moved languidly about, to an exasperating show of shells, curiosities,
and local photographs which quenched further curiosity.

However, beyond the shops, at the distant end of an Axminster vista
flanked by cabbage-palms and masterpieces from Grand Rapids, he saw
sunshine and the green tops of trees; and he made toward the oasis,
coming out along a white colonnade overlooking the hotel gardens.

It was early enough for any ambitious bird to sing, but there were few
song-birds in the gardens--a palm warbler or two, and a pair of subdued
mocking-birds not inclined to be tuneful. Everywhere, however, purple
and bronze grackle appeared, flying or walking busily over the lawns,
sunlight striking the rainbow hackle on their necks, and their
pale-yellow or bright-orange eyes staring boldly at the gardeners who
dawdled about the flowery labyrinths with watering-can and jointed hose.
And from every shrub and tree came the mildly unpleasant calling of the
grackle, and the blackbirds along the lagoon answered with their own
unmusical "Co-ca-_chee_!--Co-ca-chee-e!"

Somehow, to Hamil, the sunshine seemed to reveal more petty defects in
this semi-tropical landscape than he could have divined the night before
under the unblemished magic of the stars. For the grass was not real
grass, but only that sparse, bunchy, sun-crisped substitute from
Bermuda; here and there wind-battered palmetto fronds hung burnt and
bronzed; and the vast hotel, which through the darkness he had seen
piled up above the trees in cliff-like beauty against the stars, was
actually remarkable only for its size and lack of architectural
interest.

He began to wonder whether the inhabitants of its thousand rooms, aware
of the pitiless clarity of this semi-tropical morning sunlight, shunned
it lest it reveal unsuspected defects in those pretty lantern-lit faces
of which he had had glimpses in the gardens' enchanted dusk the night
before. However, the sunshine seemed to render the little children only
the lovelier, and he sat on the railing, his back against a pillar,
watching them racing about with their nurses, until the breakfast hour
at last came around and found him at table, no longer hungry.

A stream of old ladies and gentlemen continued toddling into the
breakfast rooms where an acre or two of tables, like a profuse crop of
mushrooms, disturbed the monotony of the hotel interior with a monotony
still more pronounced. However, there was hazy sunshine in the place and
a glimpse of blessed green outside, and the leisurely negroes brought
him fruit which was almost as good as the New York winter markets
afforded, and his breakfast amused him mildly.

The people, too, amused him--so many dozens of old ladies and gentlemen,
all so remarkably alike in a common absence of distinguishing traits--a
sort of homogeneous, expressionless similarity which was rather amazing
as they doubtless had gathered there from all sections of the Republic.

But the children were delightful, and all over the vast room he could
distinguish their fresh little faces like tufts of flowers set in a
waste of dusty stubble, and amid the culinary clatter their clear, gay
little voices broke through cheerfully at moments, grateful as the
morning chatter of sparrows in early spring.

When Hamil left his table he halted to ask an imposing head-waiter
whether Miss Palliser might be expected to breakfast, and was informed
that she breakfasted and lunched in her rooms and dined always in the
cafe.

So he stopped at the desk and sent up his card.

A number of young people evidently equipped for the golf links now
pervaded hall and corridor; others, elaborately veiled for motoring,
stopped at the desk for letters on their way into the outer sunshine.

A row of rather silent but important-looking gentlemen, morning cigars
afire, gradually formed ranks in arm-chairs under the colonnade; people
passing and repassing began to greet each other with more vivacity;
veranda and foyer became almost animated as the crowd increased. And now
a demure bride or two emerged in all the radiance of perfect love and
raiment, squired by _him_, braving the searching sunshine with
confidence in her beauty, her plumage, and a kindly planet; and, in
pitiful contrast, here and there some waxen-faced invalid, wheeled by a
trained nurse, in cap and cuffs, through sunless halls into the clear
sea air, to lie motionless, with leaden lids scarcely parted, in the
glory of a perfect day.

A gentleman, rotund of abdomen, wearing a stubby red moustache, screwed
a cigar firmly into the off corner of his mouth and, after looking
aggressively at Hamil for fully half a minute, said:

"Southern Pacific sold off at the close."

"Indeed," said Hamil.

"It's like picking daisies," said the gentleman impressively. And, after
a pause, during which he continued to survey the younger man: "What
name?" he inquired, as though Hamil had been persistently attempting to
inform him.

Hamil told him good-naturedly.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hamil. My name is Rawley--probably the name is
familiar to you?--Ambrose Rawley"--he coughed--"by profession a
botanist."

Hamil smiled, recognising in the name the most outrageously expensive of
New York florists who had made a fortune in cut flowers.

"Have a drink?" persisted Mr. Rawley. "No? Too early for you? Well,
let's get a couple of niggers and wheel-chairs."

But Hamil declined with the easy good-humour which characterised him;
and a few moments later, learning at the office that his aunt would
receive him, followed his negro guide through endless carpeted
labyrinths and was ushered by a maid into a sunny reception-room.

"Garry!--you dear boy!" exclaimed his amazingly youthful aunt, holding
out both arms to him from the door of her bedroom, partly ajar.
"No--don't come near me; I'm not even in complete negligee yet, but I
will be in one minute when Titine fastens me up and makes the most of my
scanty locks--" She looked out at him with a laugh and gave her head a
little jerk forward, and her splendid chestnut hair came tumbling down
in the sunshine.

"You're prettier than ever," said her nephew; "they'll take us for bride
and groom as usual. I say, Constance, I suppose they've followed you
down here."

"Who, Garry,"--very innocently.

"The faithful three, Colonel Vetchen, Cuyp, and old--I mean the
gracefully mature Courtlandt Classon. Are they here?"

"I believe so, dear," admitted his aunt demurely. "And, Garry, so is
Virginia Suydam."

"Really," he said, suddenly subdued as his aunt who was forty and looked
twenty-five came forward in her pretty chamber-gown, and placed two firm
white arms around him and kissed him squarely and with vigour.

"You dear!" she said; "you certainly are the best-looking boy in all
Florida. When did you come? Is Jim Wayward's yacht here still? And why
didn't he come to see me?"

"The _Ariani_ sailed for Miami last night after I landed. I left my
card, but the office people rang and rang and could get no answer--"

"I was in bed! How stupid of me! I retired early because Virginia and I
had been dissipating shamefully all the week and my aged bones required
a rest.... And now tell me all about this new commission of yours. I
have met the Cardross family; everybody at Palm Beach is talking about
the magnificent park Mr. Cardross is planning; and your picture has
appeared in the local paper, and I've told everybody you're quite
wonderful, and everybody now is informing everybody else that you're
quite wonderful!"

His very gay aunt lay back in her great soft chair, pushing with both
fair hands the masses of chestnut hair from her forehead, and smiling at
him out of her golden brown eyes--the jolliest, frankest of eyes--the
sort even women trust instinctively at first glimpse.

So he sat there and told her all about his commission and how this man,
Neville Cardross, whom he had never even seen, had written to him and
asked him to make the most splendid park in America around the Cardross
villa, and had invited him to be his guest during his stay in Florida.

"They evidently are nice people from the way Mr. Cardross writes," he
said. "You say you know them, Constance?"

"I've met them several times--the way you meet people here. They have a
villa--rather imposing in an exotic fashion. Why, yes, Garry, they _are_
nice; dreadfully wealthy, tremendously popular. Mrs. Carrick, the
married daughter, is very agreeable; her mother is amiable and
dreadfully stout. Then there's a boy of your age--Gray Cardross--a
well-mannered youth who drives motors, and whom Mr. Classon calls a
'speed-mad cub.' Then there is Cecile Cardross--a debutante of last
winter, and then--" Miss Palliser hesitated, crossed one knee over the
other, and sat gently swinging her slippered foot and looking at her
nephew.

"Does that conclude the list of the Cardross family?" he asked.

"N-no. There remains the beauty of the family, Shiela." She continued to
survey him with smiling intentness, and went on slowly:

"Shiela Cardross; _the_ girl here. People are quite mad about her, I
assure you. My dear, every man at Palm Beach tags after her; rows of
callow youths sit and gaze at her very footprints in the sand when she
crosses the beach; she turns masculine heads to the verge of permanent
dislocation. No guilty man escapes; even Courtlandt Classon is
meditating treachery to me, and Mr. Cuyp has long been wavering and
Gussie Vetchen too! the wretch!... We poor women try hard to like
her--but, Garry, _is_ it human to love such a girl?"

"It's divine, Constance, so you'll like her."

"Oh, yes; thank you. Well, I do; I don't know her well, but I'm inclined
to like her--in a way.... There's something else, though." She
considered her handsome nephew steadily. "You are to be a guest there
while this work of yours is in hand?"

"Yes--I believe so."

"Then, dear, without the slightest unworthy impulse or the faintest
trace of malice, I wish to put you on your guard. It's horrid, but I
must."

"On my guard!" he repeated.

[Illustration: "So he sat there and told her all about his commission."]

"Yes--forearm you, Garry. Shiela Cardross is a rather bewildering
beauty. She is French convent-bred, clever and cultivated and extremely
talented. Besides that she has every fashionable grace and
accomplishment at the ends of her pretty fingers--and she has a way with
her--a way of looking at you--which is pure murder to the average man.
And beside that she is very simple and sweet to everybody. As an
assassin of hearts she's equipped to slay yours, Garry."

"Well?" he inquired, laughing. And added: "Let her slay. Why not?"

"This, dear. And you who know me will acquit me of any ignoble motive if
I say that she is not your social equal, Garry."

"What! I thought you said--"

"Yes--about the others. But it is not the same with Shiela Cardross.
I--it seems cruel to say it--but it is for your sake--to effectually
forestall any possible accident--that I am going to tell you that this
very lovely girl, Shiela, is an adopted child, not a daughter. That
exceedingly horrid old gossip, Mrs. Van Dieman, told me that the girl
was a foundling taken by Mr. and Mrs. Cardross from the Staten Island
asylum. And I'm afraid Mrs. Van Dieman knows what she's talking about
because she founded and still supports the asylum."

Hamil looked gravely across at his aunt. "The poor little girl," he said
slowly. "Lord, but that's tough! and tougher still to have Mrs. Van
Dieman taking the trouble to spread the news. Can't you shut her up?"

"It _is_ tough, Garret. I suppose they all are dreadfully sensitive
about it. I begged Mrs. Van Dieman to keep her own counsel. But she
won't. And you know, dear, that it would make no difference to me in my
relations with the girl--except that"--she hesitated, smiling--"she is
_not_ good enough for you, Garry, and so, if you catch the prevailing
contagion, and fall a victim, you have been inoculated now and will
have the malady lightly."

"My frivolous and fascinating aunt," he said, "have you ever known me to
catch any prevailing--"

"O Garret! You know you have!--dozens of times--"

"I've been civilly attentive to several girls--"

"I wish to goodness you'd marry Virginia Suydam; but you won't."

"Virginia!" he repeated, astonished.

"Yes, I do; I wish you were safely and suitably married. I'm worried,
Garry; you are becoming too good-looking not to get into some horrid
complication--as poor Jim Wayward did; and now he's done for, finished!
Oh, I wish I didn't feel so responsible for you. And I _wish_ you
weren't going to the Cardrosses' to live for months!"

He leaned forward, laughing, and took his aunt's slim hands between his
own sunburned fists. "You cunning little thing," he said, "if you talk
that way I'll marry you off to one of the faithful three; you and
Virginia too. Lord, do you think I'm down here to cut capers when I've
enough hard work ahead to drive a dozen men crazy for a year? As for
your beautiful Miss Cardross--why I saw a girl in a boat--not long
ago--who really was a beauty. I mean to find her, some day; and that
_is_ something for you to worry about!"

"Garry! _Tell_ me!"

But he rose, still laughing, and saluted Miss Palliser's hands.

"If you and Virginia have nothing better on I'll dine with you at eight.
Yes? No?"

"Of course. Where are you going now?"

"To report to Mr. Cardross--and brave beauty in its bower," he added
mischievously. "I'll doubtless be bowled over first shot and come around
for a dinner and a blessing at eight this evening."

"Don't joke about it," she said as they rose together and stood for a
moment at the window looking down into the flowering gardens.

"Is it not a jolly scene?" she added--"the fountain against the green,
and the flowers and the sunshine everywhere, and all those light summer
gowns outdoors in January, and--" She checked herself and laid her hand
on his arm; "Garry, do you see that girl in the wheel-chair!--the one
just turning into the gardens!"

He had already seen her. Suddenly his heart stood still in dread of what
his aunt was about to say. He knew already somehow that she was going to
say it, yet when she spoke the tiny shock came just the same.

"That," said his aunt, "is Shiela Cardross. Is she not too lovely for
words?"

"Yes," he said, "she is very beautiful."

For a while they stood together there at the window, then he said
good-bye in a rather subdued manner which made his aunt laugh that
jolly, clear laugh which never appealed to him in vain.

"You're not mortally stricken already at your first view of her, are
you?" she asked.

"Not mortally," he said.

"Then fall a victim and recover quickly. And _don't_ let me sit here too
long without seeing you; will you?"

She went to the door with him, one arm linked in his, brown eyes bright
with her pride and confidence in him--in this tall, wholesome,
clean-built boy, already on the verge of distinction in his rather
unusual profession. And she saw in him all the strength and engaging
good looks of his dead father, and all the clear and lovable sincerity
of his mother--her only sister--now also dead.

"You _will_ come to see me sometimes--won't you, Garry?" she repeated
wistfully.

"Of course I will. Give my love to Virginia and my amused regards to the
faithful three."

And so they parted, he to saunter down into the cool gardens on his way
to call on Mr. Cardross; she to pace the floor, excited by his arrival,
her heart beating with happiness, pride, solicitude for the young fellow
who was like brother and son to her--this handsome, affectionate,
generous boy who had steadily from the very first declined to accept one
penny of her comfortable little fortune lest she be deprived of the
least luxury or convenience, and who had doggedly educated and prepared
himself, and contrived to live within the scanty means he had inherited.

And now at last the boy saw success ahead, and Miss Palliser was happy,
dreaming brilliant dreams for him, conjuring vague splendours for the
future--success unbounded, honours, the esteem of all good men; this,
for her boy. And--if it must be--love, in its season--with the
inevitable separation and a slow dissolution of an intimacy which had
held for her all she desired in life--his companionship, his happiness,
his fortune; this also she dreamed for his sake. Yes--knowing she could
not always keep him, and that it must come inexorably, she dreamed of
love for him--and marriage.

And, as she stood now by the sunny window, idly intent on her vision,
without warning the face of Shiela Cardross glimmered through the dream,
growing clearer, distinct in every curve and tint of its exquisite
perfection; and she stared at the mental vision, evoking it with all
the imagination of her inner consciousness, unquiet yet curious,
striving to look into the phantom's eyes--clear, direct eyes which she
remembered; and a thrill of foreboding touched her, lest the boy she
loved might find in the sweetness of these clear eyes a peril not
lightly overcome.

"She is so unusually beautiful," said Miss Palliser aloud, unconscious
that she had spoken. And she added, wondering, "God knows what blood is
in her veins to form a body so divine."




CHAPTER V

A FLANK MOVEMENT


Young Hamil, moving thoughtfully along through the gardens, caught a
glimpse of a group under the palms which halted him for an instant, then
brought him forward, hat off, hand cordially outstretched.

"Awf'lly glad to see you, Virginia; this is very jolly; hello, Cuyp! How
are you, Colonel Vetchen--oh! how do you do, Mr. Classon!" as the latter
came trotting down the path, twirling a limber walking-stick.

"How-dee-do! How-dee-do!" piped Courtlandt Classon, with a rickety
abandon almost paternal; and, replying literally, Hamil admitted his
excellent physical condition.

Virginia Suydam, reclining in her basket chair, very picturesque in a
broad hat, smiled at him out of her peculiar bluish-green eyes, while
Courtlandt Classon fussed and fussed and patted his shoulder; an old
beau who had toddled about Manhattan in the days when the town was gay
below Bleecker Street, when brownstone was for the rich alone, when the
family horses wore their tails long and a proud Ethiope held the reins,
when Saratoga was the goal of fashion, and old General Jan
Van-der-Duynck pronounced his own name "Wonnerdink," with profane
accompaniment.

They were all most affable--Van Tassel Cuyp with the automatic nervous
snicker that deepened the furrows from nostril to mouth, a tall
stoop-shouldered man of scant forty with the high colour, long, nervous
nose, and dull eye of Dutch descent; and Colonel Augustus Magnelius
Pietrus Vetchen, scion of an illustrious line whose ancestors had been
colonial governors and judges before the British flag floated from the
New Amsterdam fort. His daughter was the celebrated beauty, Mrs. Tom
O'Hara. She had married O'Hara and so many incredible millions that
people insisted that was why Colonel Vetchen's eyebrows expressed the
acute slant of perpetual astonishment.

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