The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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So they were all cordial, for was he not related to the late General
Garret Suydam and, therefore, distantly to them all? And these men who
took themselves and their lineage so seriously, took Hamil seriously;
and he often attempted to appreciate it seriously, but his sense of
humour was too strong. They were all good people, kindly and harmless
snobs; and when he had made his adieux under the shadow of the white
portico, he lingered a moment to observe the obsolete gallantry with
which Mr. Classon and Colonel Vetchen wafted Virginia up the steps.

Cuyp lingered to venture a heavy pleasantry or two which distorted his
long nose into a series of white-ridged wrinkles, then he ambled away
and disappeared within the abode of that divinity who shapes our ends,
the manicure; and Hamil turned once more toward the gardens.

The hour was still early; of course too unconventional to leave cards on
the Cardross family, even too early for a business visit; but he thought
he would stroll past the villa, the white walls of which he had dimly
seen the evening before. Besides his Calypso was there. Alas! for
Calypso. Yet his heart tuned up a trifle as he thought of seeing her so
soon again.

And so, a somewhat pensive but wholly attractive and self-confident
young opportunist in white flannels, he sauntered through the hotel
gardens and out along the dazzling shell-road.

No need for him to make inquiries of passing negroes; no need to ask
where the House of Cardross might be found; for although he had seen it
only by starlight, and the white sunshine now transformed everything
under its unfamiliar glare, he remembered his way, etape by etape, from
the foliated iron grille of Whitehall to the ancient cannon bedded in
rusting trunnions; and from that mass of Spanish bronze, southward under
the tall palms, past hedges of vermilion hibiscus and perfumed oleander,
past villa after villa embowered in purple, white, and crimson flowering
vines, and far away inland along the snowy road until, at the turn, a
gigantic banyan tree sprawled across the sky and the lilac-odour of
china-berry in bloom stole subtly through the aromatic confusion, pure,
sweet, refreshing in all its exquisite integrity.

"Calypso's own fragrance," he thought to himself--remembering the
intimate perfume of her hair and gown as she passed so near to him in
the lantern light when he had spoken without discretion.

And suddenly the reminiscent humour faded from his eyes and mouth as he
remembered what his aunt had said of this young girl; and, halting in
his tracks, he recalled what she herself had said; that the harmless
liberties another girl might venture to take with informality, armoured
in an assurance above common convention, she could not venture. And now
he knew why.... She had expected him to learn that she was an adopted
daughter; in the light of his new knowledge he understood that. No doubt
it was generally known. But the child had not expected him to know more
than that; and, her own knowledge of the hopeless truth, plainly enough,
was the key to that note of bitterness which he had detected at times,
and even spoken of--that curious maturity forced by unhappy
self-knowledge, that apathetic indifference stirred at moments to a
quick sensitive alertness almost resembling self-defence. She was aware
of her own story; that was certain. And the acid of that knowledge was
etching the designs of character upon a physical adolescence unprepared
for such biting reaction.

He was sorry he knew it, feeling ashamed of his own guiltless invasion
of the girl's privacy.

The only reparation possible was to forget it. Like an honourable
card-player who inadvertently sees his opponent's cards, he must play
his hand exactly as he would have in the beginning. And that, he
believed, would be perfectly simple.

Reassured he looked across the lawns toward the Cardross villa, a big
house of coquina cement, very beautiful in its pseudo-Spanish
architecture, red-tiled roofs, cool patias, arcades, and courts; the
formality of terrace, wall, and fountain charmingly disguised under a
riot of bloom and foliage.

The house stood farther away than he had imagined, for here the public
road ended abruptly in a winding hammock-trail, and to the east the
private drive of marl ran between high gates of wrought iron swung wide
between carved coquina pillars.

And the house itself was very much larger than he had imagined; the
starlight had illuminated only a small portion of its white facade,
tricking him; for this was almost a palace--one of those fine
vigorously designed mansions, so imposing in simplicity, nicknamed by
smug humility--a "cottage," or "villa."

"By jingo, it's noble!" he exclaimed, the exotic dignity of the house
dawning on him by degrees as he moved forward and the southern ocean
sprang into view, turquoise and amethyst inlaid streak on streak to the
still horizon.

"What a chance!" he repeated under his breath; "what a chance for the
noblest park ever softened into formality! And the untouched forests
beyond!--and the lagoons!--and the dunes to the east--and the sea! Lord,
Lord," he whispered with unconscious reverence, "what an Eden!"

One of the white-haired, black-skinned children of men--though the point
is locally disputed--looked up from the grass where he squatted
gathering ripe fruit under a sapodilla tree; and to an inquiry:

"Yaas-suh, yaas-suh; Mistuh Cahdhoss in de pomelo g'ove, suh, feedin'
mud-cat to de wile-puss."

"Doing _what_?"

"Feedin' mud-fish to de wile-cat, de wile lynx-cat, suh." The aged negro
rose, hat doffed, juicy traces of forbidden sapodillas on his face which
he naively removed with the back of the blackest and most grotesquely
wrinkled hand Hamil had ever seen.

"Yaas-suh; 'scusin' de 'gator, wile-cat love de mud-fish mostest; yaas,
suh. Ole torm-cat he fish de crick lak he was no 'count Seminole
trash--"

"One moment, uncle," interrupted Hamil, smiling; "is that the pomelo
grove? And is that gentleman yonder Mr. Cardross?"

"Yaas-suh."

He stood silent a moment thoughtfully watching the distant figure
through the vista of green leaves, white blossoms, and great clusters of
fruit hanging like globes of palest gold in the sun.

"I think," he said absently, "that I'll step over and speak to Mr.
Cardross.... Thank you, uncle.... What kind of fruit is that you're
gathering?"

"Sappydilla, suh."

Hamil laughed; he had heard that a darky would barter 'possum, ham-bone,
and soul immortal for a ripe sapodilla; he had also once, much farther
northward, seen the distressing spectacle of Savannah negroes loading a
freight car with watermelons; and it struck him now that it was equally
rash to commission this aged uncle on any such business as the gathering
of sapodillas for family consumption.

The rolling, moist, and guileless eye of the old man whose slightly
pained expression made it plain that he divined exactly what Hamil had
been thinking, set the young man laughing outright.

"Don't worry, uncle," he said; "they're not my sapodillas"; and he
walked toward the pomelo grove, the old man, a picture of outraged
innocence, looking after him, thoughtlessly biting into an enormous and
juicy specimen of the forbidden fruit as he looked.

There was a high fence of woven wire around the grove; through scented
vistas, spotted with sunshine, fruit and blossoms hung together amid
tender foliage of glossy green; palms and palmettos stood with broad
drooping fronds here and there among the citrus trees, and the brown
woody litter which covered the ground was all starred with fallen
flowers.

The gate was open, and as Hamil stepped in he met a well-built, active
man in white flannels coming out; and both halted abruptly.

"I am looking for Mr. Cardross," said the younger man.

"I am Mr. Cardross."

Hamil nodded. "I mean that I am looking for Mr. Cardross, senior--"

"I am Mr. Cardross, senior."

Hamil gazed at this active gentleman who could scarcely be the father of
married children; and yet, as he looked, the crisp, thick hair, the
clear sun-bronzed skin which had misled him might after all belong to
that type of young-old men less common in America than in England. And
Hamil also realised that his hair was silvered, not blond, and that
neither the hands nor the eyes of this man were the hands and eyes of
youth.

"I am Garret Hamil," he said.

"I recognise you perfectly. I supposed you older--until my daughter
showed me your picture in the _News_ two weeks ago!"

"I supposed _you_ older--until this minute."

"I _am_!"

Looking squarely into each other's faces they laughed and shook hands.

"When did you come, Mr. Hamil?"

"Last night from Nassau."

"Where are you stopping?"

Hamil told him.

"Your rooms are ready here. It's very good of you to come to see me at
once--"

"It's very good of you to want me--"

"Want you, man alive! Of course I want you! I'm all on edge over this
landscape scheme; I've done nothing since we arrived from the North but
ride over and over the place--and I've not half covered it yet. That's
the way we'll begin work, isn't it? Knock about together and get a
general idea of the country; isn't that the best way?"

"Yes, certainly--"

"I thought so. The way to learn a country is to ride over it, fish over
it, shoot over it, sail around it, camp in it--that's my notion of
thoroughly understanding a region. If you're going to improve it you've
got to care something about it--begin to like it--find pleasure in it,
understand it. Isn't that true, Mr. Hamil?"

"Yes--in a measure--"

"Of course it's true," repeated Cardross with his quick engaging laugh;
"if a man doesn't care for a thing he's not fitted to alter or modify
it. I've often thought that those old French landscape men must have
dearly loved the country they made so beautiful--loved it
intelligently--for they left so much wild beauty edging the formality of
their creations. Do you happen to remember the Chasse at Versailles? And
that's what I want here! You don't mind my instructing you in your own
profession, do you?"

They both laughed again, apparently qualified to understand one another.

Cardross said: "I'm glad you're young; I'm glad you've come. This is
going to be the pleasantest winter of my life. There isn't anything I'd
rather do than just this kind of thing--if you'll let me tag after you
and talk about it. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, I don't," said Hamil sincerely.

"We'll probably have rows," suggested Cardross; "I may want vistas and
terraces and fountains where they ought not to be."

"Oh, no, you won't," replied Hamil, laughing; "you'll understand things
when I give reasons."

"That's what I want--reasons. If anybody would only give me
reasons!--but nobody does. Listen; will you come up to the house with me
and meet my family? And then you'll lunch with them--I've a business
luncheon at the club--unfortunately--but I'll come back. Meanwhile
there'll be somebody to show you about, or you can run out to the Inlet
in one of the motor-boats if you like, or do anything you like that may
amuse you; the main thing is for you to be amused, to find this place
agreeable, to like this kind of country, to like us. _Then_ you can do
good work, Mr. Hamil."

A grinning negro shuffled up and closed the gate as they left the grove
together and started across the lawn. Cardross, cordial in his quick,
vigorous manner, strolled with his hands in his coat pockets, planting
each white-shod foot firmly as he walked, frequently turning head and
shoulders squarely toward his companion when speaking.

He must have been over fifty; he did not appear forty; still, on closer
and more detailed inspection Hamil understood how much his alert,
well-made figure had to do with the first impression of youth. Yet his
expression had nothing in it of that shadow which falls with
years--nothing to show to the world that he had once taken the world by
the throat and wrung a fortune out of it--nothing of the hard gravity or
the underlying sadness of almost ruthless success, and the
responsibility for it.

Yet, from the first, Hamil had been aware of all that was behind this
unstudied frankness, this friendly vigour. There was a man, there--every
inch a man, but exactly of what sort the younger man had not yet
decided.

* * * * *

A faded and very stout lady, gowned with elaborate simplicity, yet
somehow suggesting well-bred untidiness, rolled toward them, propelled
in a wheeled-chair by a black servant.

"Dear," said Mr. Cardross, "this is Mr. Hamil." And Mrs. Cardross
offered him her chubby hand and said a little more than he expected.
Then, to her husband, languidly:

"They're playing tennis, Neville. If Mr. Hamil would care to play there
are tennis-shoes belonging to Gray and Acton."

"Thank you, Mrs. Cardross," said Hamil, "but, as a matter of fact, I am
not yet acclimated."

"You feel a little sleepy?" drawled Mrs. Cardross, maternally
solicitous; "everybody does for the first few days." And to her husband:
"Jessie and Cecile are playing; Shiela must be somewhere about--You will
lunch with us, Mr. Hamil? There's to be a tennis luncheon under the
oaks--we'd really like to have you if you can stay."

Hamil accepted as simply as the invitation was given; Mrs. Cardross
exchanged a few words with her husband in that perfectly natural drawl
which at first might have been mistaken for languid affectation; then
she smiled at Hamil and turned around in her basket chair, parasol
tilted, and the black boy began slowly pedalling her away across the
lawn.

"We'll step over to the tennis-courts," said Cardross, replacing the
straw hat which he had removed to salute his wife; "they're having a
sort of scratch-tournament I believe--my daughters and some other young
people. I think you'll find the courts rather pretty."

The grounds were certainly quaint; spaces for four white marl courts had
been cleared, hewn out of the solid jungle which walled them in with a
noble living growth of live oak, cedar, magnolia, and palmetto. And on
these courts a very gay company of young people in white were playing or
applauding the players while the snowy balls flew across the nets and
the resonant blows of the bats rang out.

And first Mr. Cardross presented Hamil to his handsome married daughter,
Mrs. Acton Carrick, a jolly, freckled, young matron who showed her teeth
when she smiled and shook hands like her father; and then he was made
known to the youngest daughter, Cecile Cardross, small, plump, and
sun-tanned, with ruddy hair and mischief in every feature.

There was, also, a willowy Miss Staines and a blond Miss Anan, and a
very young Mr. Anan--a brother--and a grave and gaunt Mr. Gatewood and a
stout Mr. Ellison, and a number of others less easy to remember.

"This wholesale introduction business is always perplexing," observed
Cardross; "but they'll all remember you, and after a time you'll begin
to distinguish them from the shrubbery. No"--as Mrs. Carrick asked Hamil
if he cared to play--"he would rather look on this time, Jessie. Go
ahead; we are not interrupting you; where is Shiela--"

And Hamil, chancing to turn, saw her, tennis-bat tucked under one bare
arm, emerging from the jungle path; and at the same instant she caught
sight of him. Both little chalked shoes stood stockstill--for a second
only--then she came forward, leisurely, continuing to eat the ripe
guava with which she had been occupied.

Cardross, advancing, said: "This is Mr. Hamil, dearest; and," to the
young man: "My daughter Shiela."

She nodded politely.

"Now I've got to go, Shiela," continued Cardross. "Hamil, you'll amuse
yourself, won't you, until I return after luncheon? Shiela, Mr. Hamil
doesn't care to play tennis; so if you'll find out what he does care to
do--" He saluted the young people gaily and started across the lawn
where a very black boy with a chair stood ready to convey him to the
village and across the railroad tracks to that demure little
flower-embowered cottage the interior of which presents such an amazing
contrast to the exterior.

CHAPTER VI

ARMISTICE

The young girl beside him had finished her guava, and now, idly swinging
her tennis-bat, stood watching the games in the sunken courts below.

"Please don't consider me a burden," he said. "I would be very glad to
sit here and watch you play."

"I have been playing, thank you."

"But you won't let me interfere with anything that--"

"No, Mr. Hamil, I won't let you interfere--with anything."

She stood swinging her bat, apparently preoccupied with her own
thoughts--like a very grave goddess, he thought, glancing at her
askance--a very young goddess, immersed in celestial reverie far beyond
mortal comprehension.

"Do you like guavas?" she inquired. And, closing her own question: "But
you had better not until you are acclimated. Do you feel _very_ sleepy,
Mr. Hamil?"

"No, I don't," he said.

"Oh! You ought to conform to tradition. There's a particularly alluring
hammock on the veranda."

"To get rid of me is it necessary to make me take a nap?" he protested.

"So you refuse to go to sleep?"

"I certainly do."

She sighed and tucked the tennis-bat under her left arm. "Come," she
said, moving forward, "my father will ask me what I have done to amuse
you, and I had better hunt up something to tell him about. You'll want
to see the groves of course--"

"Yes, but I'm not going to drag you about with me--"

"Come," she repeated; and as he stood his ground obstinately:
"Please?"--with a rising inflection hinting at command.

"Why on earth don't you play tennis and let me sit and watch you?" he
asked, joining and keeping step with her.

"Why do you ask a woman for reasons, Mr. Hamil?"

"It's too bad to spoil your morning--"

"I know it; so in revenge I'm going to spoil yours. Our trip is called
'Seeing Florida,' so you must listen to your guide very attentively.
This is a pomelo grove--thank you," to the negro who opened the
gate--"here you see blossoms and ripe fruit together on the same tree. A
few palmettos have been planted here for various agricultural reasons.
This is a camphor bush"--touching it with her bat--"the leaves when
crushed in the palm exhale a delightful fragr--"

"Calypso!"

She turned toward him with coldest composure. "_That_ never happened,
Mr. Hamil."

"No," he said, "it never did."

A slight colour remained in his face; hers was cool enough.

"Did you think it happened?" she asked. He shook his head. "No," he
repeated seriously, "I know that it never happened."

She said: "If you are quite sure it never happened, there is no harm in
pretending it did.... What was it you called me?"

"I could never remember, Miss Cardross--unless you tell me."

"Then I'll tell you--if you are quite sure you don't remember. You
called me 'Calypso.'"

And looking up he surprised the rare laughter in her eyes.

"You are rather nice after all," she said, "or is it only that I have
you under such rigid discipline? But it was very bad taste in you to
recall so crudely what never occurred--until I gave you the liberty to
do it. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "I've made two exhibitions of myself since I knew
you--"

"_One_, Mr. Hamil. Please recollect that I am scarcely supposed to know
how many exhibitions of yourself you may have made before we were
formally presented."

She stood still under a tree which drooped like a leaf-tufted umbrella,
and she said, swinging her racket: "You will always have me at a
disadvantage. Do you know it?"

"That is utterly impossible!"

"Is it? Do you mean it?"

"I do with all my heart--"

"Thank you; but do you mean it with all your logical intelligence, too?"

"Yes, of course I do."

She stood, head partly averted, one hand caressing the smooth,
pale-yellow fruit which hung in heavy clusters around her. And all
around her, too, the delicate white blossoms poured out fragrance, and
the giant swallow-tail butterflies in gold and black fluttered and
floated among the blossoms or clung to them as though stupefied by their
heavy sweetness.

"I wish we had begun--differently," she mused.

"I don't wish it."

She said, turning on him almost fiercely: "You persisted in talking to
me in the boat; you contrived to make yourself interesting without being
offensive--I don't know how you managed it! And then--last night--I was
not myself.... And then--_that_ happened!"

"Could anything more innocent have happened?"

"Something far more dignified could have happened when I heard you say
'Calypso.'" She shrugged her shoulders. "It's done; we've misbehaved;
and you will have to be dreadfully careful. You will, won't you? And yet
I shall certainly hate you heartily if you make any difference between
me and other women. Oh, dear!--Oh, dear! The whole situation is just
unimportant enough to be irritating. Mr. Hamil, I don't think I care for
you very much."

And as he looked at her with a troubled smile, she added:

"You must not take that declaration _too_ literally. Can you
forget--various things?"

"I don't want to, Miss Cardross. Listen: nobody could be more sweet,
more simple, more natural than the girl I spoke to--I dreamed that I
talked with--last night. I don't want to forget that night, or that
girl. Must I?"

"Are you, in your inmost thoughts, fastidious in thinking of that girl?
Is there any reservation, any hesitation?"

He said, meeting her eyes: "She is easily the nicest girl I ever
met--the very nicest. Do you think that I might have her for a friend?"

"Do you mean this girl, Calypso?"

"Yes."

"Then I think that she will return to you the exact measure of
friendship that you offer her.... Because, Mr. Hamil, she is after all
not very old in years, and a little sensitive and impressionable."

He thought to himself: "She is a rather curious mixture of impulse and
reason; of shyness and audacity; of composure and timidity; of courage
and cowardice and experience. But there is in her no treachery; nothing
mentally unwholesome."

They stood silent a moment smiling at each other rather seriously; then
her smooth hand slid from his, and she drew a light breath.

"What a relief!" she said.

"What?"

"To know you are the kind of man I knew you were. That sounds rather
Irish, doesn't it?..." And under her breath--"perhaps it is. God knows!"
Her face grew very grave for a moment, then, as she turned and looked at
him, the shadow fell.

"Do you know--it was absurd of course--but I could scarcely sleep last
night for sheer dread of your coming to-day. And yet I knew what sort of
a man you must be; and this morning"--she shook her head--"I couldn't
endure any breakfast, and I usually endure lots; so I took a spin down
the lake in my chair. When I saw you just now I was trying to brace up
on a guava. Listen to me: I am hungry!"

"You poor little thing--"

"Sympathy satisfies sentiment but appetite prefers oranges. Shall we eat
oranges together and become friendly and messy? Are you even _that_ kind
of a man? Oh, then if you really are, there's a mixed grove just
beyond."

So together, shoulder to shoulder, keeping step, they passed through the
new grove with its enormous pendent bunches of grape-fruit, and into a
second grove where limes and mandarins hung among clusters of lemons and
oranges; where kum-quat bushes stood stiffly, studded with egg-shaped,
orange-tinted fruit; where tangerines, grape-fruit, and king-oranges
grew upon the same tree, and the deep scarlet of ripe Japanese
persimmons and the huge tattered fronds of banana trees formed a riotous
background.

"This tree!" she indicated briefly, reaching up; and her hand was white
even among the milky orange bloom--he noticed that as he bent down a
laden bough for her.

"Pine-oranges," she said, "the most delicious of all. I'll pick and you
hold the branch. And please get me a few tangerines--those
blood-tangerines up there.... Thank you; and two Japanese
persimmons--and two more for yourself.... Have you a knife? Very well;
now, break a fan from that saw-palmetto and sweep a place for me on the
ground--that way. And now please look very carefully to see if there are
any spiders. No spiders? No scorpions? No wood-ticks? Are you sure?"

"There _may_ be a bandersnatch," he said doubtfully, dusting the ground
with his palmetto fan.

She laughed and seated herself on the ground, drew down her short white
tennis-skirt as far as it would go over her slim ankles, looked up at
him confidently, holding out her hand for his knife.

"We are going to be delightfully messy in a moment," she said; "let me
show you how they prepare an orange in Florida. This is for you--you
must take it.... And this is for me. The rind is all gone, you see. Now,
Ulysses. This is the magic moment!"

And without further ceremony her little teeth met in the dripping golden
pulp; and in another moment Hamil was imitating her.

They appeared to be sufficiently hungry; the brilliant rind, crinkling,
fell away in golden corkscrews from orange after orange, and still they
ate on, chattering away together between oranges.

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