The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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They stood for a moment motionless, looking straight at one another;
then the smile died out on his face, but he still strove to speak
lightly, using effort, like a man with a dream dark upon him: "I am
waiting for your pretty ghostship."

Her lips moved in reply; no sound came from them.

"Are you afraid of me?" he said.

"Yes."

"Of _me_, Shiela?"

"Of us both. You don't know--you don't know!"

"Know what, Shiela?"

"What I am--what I have done. And I've got to tell you." Her mouth
quivered suddenly, and she faced him fighting for self-control. "I've
got to tell you. Things cannot be left in this way between us. I thought
they could, but they can't."

He crossed the corridor, slowly; she straightened up at his approach,
white, rigid, breathless.

"What is it that has frightened you?" he said.

"What you--said--to me."

"That I love you?"

"Yes; that."

"Why should it frighten you?"

"Must I tell you?"

"If it will help you."

"I am past help. But it will end you're caring for me. And from making
me--care--for you. I must do it; this cannot go on--"

"Shiela!"

She faced him, white as death, looking at him blindly.

"I am trying to think of you--because you love me--"

Fright chilled her blood, killing pulse and colour. "I am trying to be
kind--because I care for you--and we must end this before it ends us....
Listen to my miserable, pitiful, little secret, Mr. Hamil. I--I have--I
am not--free."

"Not _free_!"

"I was married two years ago--when I was eighteen years old. Three
people in the world know it: you, I, and--the man I married."

"Married!" he repeated, stupefied.

She looked at him steadily a moment.

"I think your love has been done to death, Mr. Hamil. My own danger was
greater than you knew; but it was for your sake--because you loved me.
Good night."

Stunned, he saw her pass him and descend the stairs, stood for a space
alone, then scarce knowing what he did he went down into the great
living-room to take his leave of the family gathered there before dinner
had been announced. They all seemed to be there; he was indifferently
conscious of hearing his own words like a man who listens to an
unfamiliar voice in a distant room.

The rapid soundless night ride to the hotel seemed unreal; the lights in
the cafe, the noise and movement, the pretty face of his aunt with the
pink reflection from the candle shades on her cheeks--all seemed as
unconvincing as himself and this thing that he could not grasp--could
not understand--could not realise had befallen him--and her.

If Miss Palliser was sensible of any change in him or his voice or
manner she did not betray it. Wayward came over to speak to them,
limping very slightly, tall, straight, ruddy, the gray silvering his
temples and edging his moustache.

And after a while Hamil found himself sitting silent, a partly burnt
cigar between his fingers, watching Wayward and his youthful aunt in
half-intimate, half-formal badinage, elbow to elbow on the cloth. For
they had known one another a long time, and through many phases of Fate
and Destiny.

"That little Cardross girl is playing the devil with the callow
hereabout," Wayward said; "Malcourt, house-broken, runs to heel with the
rest. And when I see her I feel like joining the pack. Only--I was never
broken, you know--"

"She is a real beauty," said Miss Palliser warmly; "I don't see why you
don't enlist, James."

"I may at that. Garry, are you also involved?"

Hamil said, "Yes--yes, of course," and smiled meaninglessly at Wayward.

For a fraction of a second his aunt hesitated, then said: "Garry is
naturally among the devoted--when he's not dog-tired from a day in the
cypress-swamps. Have you been out to see the work, James? Oh, you should
go; everybody goes; it's one of the things to do here. And I'm very
proud when I hear people say, 'There's that brilliant young fellow,
Hamil,' or, in a tone which expresses profound respect, 'Hamil designed
it, you know'; and I smile and think, 'That's my boy Garry!' James, it
is a very comfortable sensation for an old lady to experience." And she
looked at Wayward out of her lovely golden eyes, sweet as a maid of
twenty.

Wayward smiled, then absently bent his gaze on his wine-glass, lying
back in his chair. Through his spectacles his eyes seemed very intent on
the frail crystal stem of his glass.

"What are you going to do for the rest of the winter?" she asked,
watching him.

"What I am doing," he replied with smiling bitterness. "The _Ariani_ is
yonder when I can't stand the shore.... What else is there for me to
do--until I snuff out!"

"Build that house you were going to build--when we were rather younger,
Jim."

"I did; and it fell," he said quietly; but, as though she had not heard.
"--Build that house," she repeated, "and line it with books--the kind of
books that were written and read before the machine-made sort supplanted
them. One picture to a room--do you remember, Jim?--or two if you find
it better; the kind men painted before Rembrandt died.... Do you
remember your plan?--the plans you drew for me to look at in our front
parlour--when New York houses had parlours? You were twenty and I
fourteen.... Garry, yonder, was not.... And the rugs, you
recollect?--one or two in a room, Shiraz, Ispahan--nothing as obvious as
Sehna and Saraband--nothing but Moresque and pure Persian--and one
agedly perfect gem of Asia Minor, and one Tekke, so old and flawless
that only the pigeon-blood fire remained under the violet bloom.... Do
you remember?"

Wayward's shoulders straightened with a jerk. For twenty years he had
not remembered these things; and she had not only remembered but was now
reciting the strange, quaint, resurrected words in their forgotten
sequence; the words he had uttered as he--or what he had once been--sat
in the old-time parlour in the mellow half light of faded brocades and
rosewood, repeating to a child the programme of his future. Lofty aim
and high ideal, the cultivated endeavour of good citizenship, loyalty to
aspiration, courage, self-respect, and the noble living of life; they
had also spoken of these things together--there in the golden gloom of
the old-time parlour when she was fourteen and he master of his fate and
twenty.

But there came into his life a brilliant woman who stayed a year and
left his name a mockery: Malcourt's only sister, now Lady Tressilvain,
doubtfully conspicuous with her loutish British husband, among those
continentals where titles serve rather to obscure than enlighten
inquiry.

The wretched affair dragged its full offensive length through the
international press; leaving him with his divorce signed and a future
endurable only when his senses had been sufficiently drugged. In sober
intervals he now had neuritis and a limp to distract his mind; also his
former brother-in-law with professions of esteem and respect and a
tendency to borrow. And drunk or sober he had the _Ariani_. But the
house that Youth had built in the tinted obscurity of an old New York
parlour--no, he didn't have that; and even memory of it were wellnigh
gone had not Constance Palliser spoken from the shadows of the past.

He lifted his glass unsteadily and replaced it. Then slowly he raised
his head and looked full at Constance Palliser.

"It's too late," he said; "but I wish I had known that you remembered."

"Would you have built it, Jim?"

He looked at her again, then shook his head: "For whom am I to build,
Constance?"

She leaned forward, glancing at the unconscious Hamil, then dropped her
voice: "Build it for the Boy that Was, Jim."

"A headstone would be fitter--and less expensive."

"I am not asking you to build in memory of the dead. The Boy who Was is
only asleep. If you could let him wake, suddenly, in that house--"

A clear flush of surprise stained his skin to the hair. It had been many
years since a woman had hinted at any belief in him.

"Don't you know that I couldn't endure the four walls of a house,
Constance?"

"You have not tried this house."

"Men--such men as I--cannot go back to the House of Youth."

"Try, Jim."

His hand was shaking as he lifted it to adjust his spectacles; and
impulsively she laid her hand on his twitching arm:

"Jim, build it!--and see what happens."

"I cannot."

"Build it. You will not be alone and sad in it if you remember the boy
and the child in the parlour. They--they will be good company--if you
wish."

He rested his elbows on the table, head bent between his sea-burned
hands.

"If I could only, only do something," she whispered. "The boy has merely
been asleep, Jim. I have always known it. But it has taken many years
for me to bring myself to this moment."

"Do you think a man can come back through such wreckage and mire--do you
think he wants to come back? What do you know about it?--with your white
skin and bright hair--and that child's mouth of yours--What do you know
about it?"

"Once you were the oracle, Jim. May I not have my turn?"

"Yes--but what in God's name do you care?"

"Will you build?"

He looked at her dumbly, hopelessly; then his arm twitched and he
relieved the wrist from the weight of his head, sitting upright, his
eyes still bent on her.

"Because--in that old parlour--the child expected it of the boy," she
said. "And expects it yet."

Hamil, who, chair pushed back, had been listlessly watching the
orchestra, roused himself and turned to his aunt and Wayward.

"You want to go, Garry?" said Constance calmly. "I'll walk a little with
James before I compose my aged bones to slumber.... Good night, dear.
Will you come again soon?"

He said he would and took his leave of them in the long corridor,
traversing it without noticing which direction he took until, awaking
from abstraction, he found himself at the head of a flight of steps and
saw the portico of the railroad station below him and the signal lamps,
green and red and white, burning between the glistening rails.

Without much caring where he went, but not desiring to retrace his steps
over half a mile or so of carpet, he went out into the open air and
along the picket fence toward the lake front.

As he came to the track crossing he glanced across at the Beach Club
where lights sparkled discreetly amid a tropical thicket and flowers
lay in pale carpets under the stars.

Portlaw had sent him a member's card; he took it out now and scanned it
with faint curiosity. His name was written on the round-cornered brown
card signed by a "vice-president" and a "secretary," under the engraved
notice: "To be shown when requested."

But when he ascended the winding walk among the palms and orange
blossoms, this "suicide's tag," as Malcourt called it, was not demanded
of him at the door.

The restaurant seemed to be gay and rather noisy, the women vivacious,
sometimes beautiful, and often respectable. A reek of cigarette smoke,
wine, and orange blossoms hung about the corridors; the tiny glittering
rotunda with its gaming-tables in a circle was thronged.

He watched them lose and win and lose again. Under the soft tumult of
voices the cool tones of the house attaches sounded monotonously, the
ball rattled, the wheels spun. But curiosity had already died out within
him; gain, loss, chance, Fate--and the tense white concentration of the
man beside him no longer interested him; nor did a sweet-faced young
girl in the corridor who looked a second too long at him; nor the
handsome over-flushed youth who was with her and who cried out in loud
recognition: "Gad, Hamil; why didn't you tell me you were coming?
There's somebody here who wants to meet you, but Portlaw's got
her--somewhere. You'll take supper with us anyway! We'll find you a fair
impenitent."

Hamil stared at him coolly. He was on no such terms with Malcourt, drunk
or sober. But everybody was Malcourt's friend just then, and he went on
recklessly:

"You've got to stay; hasn't he, Dolly?--Oh, I forgot--Miss Wilming, Mr.
Hamil, who's doing the new park, you know. All kinds of genius buzzes in
his head--roulette wheels buzz in mine. Hamil, you remember Miss Wilming
in the 'Motor Girl.' She was one of the acetylenes. Come on; we'll all
light up later. Make him come, Dolly."

Hamil turned to speak to her. She seemed to be, at a casual glance, the
sort of young girl who usually has a mother somewhere within ear-shot.
Upon inspection, however, her bright hair was a little too perfectly
rippled, and her mouth a trifle fuller and redder than a normal
circulation might account for. But there remained in the eyes something
as yet unquenched. And looking at her, he felt a sense of impatience and
regret that the delicate youth of her should be wasted in the flare and
shadow of the lesser world--burning to a spectre here on the crumbling
edge of things--here with Malcourt leering at her through the disordered
brilliancy of that false dawn which heralds only night.

They spoke together, smilingly formal. He had quietly turned his back on
Malcourt.

She hoped he would remain and join them; and her as yet unspoiled voice
clashed with her tinted lips and hair.

He was sorry--politely so--thanking her with the natural and unconscious
gentleness so agreeable to all women. And as in his manner there was not
the slightest hint of that half-amused, half-cynical freedom
characteristic of the worldly wise whom she was now accustoming herself
to meet, she looked up at him with a faint flush of appreciation.

Malcourt all the while was pulling Hamil by the elbow and talking on at
random almost boisterously, checking himself at intervals to exchange
familiar greetings with new-comers passing the crowded corridor. His
face was puffy and red; so were his lips; and there seemed to be a shiny
quality to hair and skin prophetic of future coarsening toward a type,
individuals of which swarmed like sleek flies around the gaming-tables
beyond.

As Hamil glanced from the young girl to Malcourt, who was still noisily
importuning him, a sudden contempt for the man arose within him. So
unreasoningly abrupt was the sensation of absolute distrust and dislike
that it cut his leave-taking to a curt word of refusal, and he turned on
his heel.

"What's the matter with you? Aren't you coming with us?" asked Malcourt,
reddening.

"No," said Hamil. "Good-bye, Miss Wilming. Thank you for asking me."

She held out her hand, uncertainly; he took it with a manner so gentle
and considerate that she ventured, hesitatingly, something about seeing
him again. To which he replied, pleasantly conventional, and started
toward the door.

"See here, Hamil," said Malcourt sharply, "is there any reason for your
sudden and deliberate rudeness to me?"

"Is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate familiarity with
me?" retorted Hamil in a low voice. "You're drunk!"

Malcourt's visage crimsoned: "O hell!" he said, "if your morals are as
lofty as your mincing manners--"

Hamil stared him into silence, hesitated, then passed in front of him
and out of the door.

Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl's arm: "Take
it from me, Dolly, that's the sort of citizen who'll sneak around to
call on your sort Saturday evenings."

She flushed painfully, but said nothing. "As for me," added Malcourt, "I
don't think I've quite finished with this nice young man."

But Dolly Wilming stood silent, head bent, slender fingers worrying her
lips, which seemed inclined to quiver.

CHAPTER X

TERRA INCOGNITA

The camp-wagon and led horses left before daylight with two of the
Cracker guides, Bulow and Carter; but it was an hour after sunrise when
Cardross, senior, Gray, Shiela, Hamil, and the head guide, Eudo Stent,
rode out of the _patio_ into the dewy beauty of a February morning.

The lagoon was pink; so was the white town on its western shore; in the
east, ocean and sky were one vast rosy-rayed glory. Few birds sang.

Through the intense stillness of early morning the little cavalcade made
a startling clatter on the shell highway; but the rattle of hoofs was
soon deadened in the sand of a broad country road curving south through
dune and hammock along the lake shore.

Dew still dropped in great splashes from pine and palm; dew powdered the
sparkle-berry bushes and lay like a tiny lake of quicksilver in the
hollow of every broad palmetto frond; and all around them earth and
grass and shrub exhaled the scented freshness of a dew-washed world.

On the still surface of the lake, tinted with palest rose and primrose,
the wild ducks floated, darkly silhouetted against the water or, hoping
for crumbs, paddled shoreward, inquiringly peering up at the riders with
little eyes of brightest gold.

"Blue-bills," said Cardross to Hamil; "nobody shoots them on the lake;
they're as tame as barnyard waterfowl. Yet, the instant these same ducks
leave this lagoon where they know they're protected they become as wild
and wary and as difficult to get a shot at as any other wild-fowl."

Shiela, riding ahead with Gray, tossed bits of bread into the water; and
the little blue-bill ducks came swimming in scores, keeping up with the
horses so fearlessly and persistently that the girl turned in her saddle
and looked back at her father in delight.

"I'm certainly as gifted as the Pied Piper, dad! If they follow me to
Ruffle Lake I won't permit a shot to be fired."

While she spoke she kept her eyes on her father. Except for a brief good
morning at breakfast she had neither looked at nor spoken to Hamil,
making no noticeable effort to avoid him, but succeeded in doing it
nevertheless.

Like her father and brother and Hamil she was mounted on an unornamental
but wiry Tallahassee horse; and she rode cross-saddle, wearing knee-coat
and kilts of kahkee and brown leather puttees strapped from under the
kneecap to the ankle. Like the others, too, she carried a small shotgun
in a saddle boot, and in the web loops across her breast glimmered the
metal rims of a dozen cartridges. A brilliant handkerchief knotted
loosely around her bare white throat, and a broad Panama turned up in
front and resolutely pulled down behind to defy sunstroke, completed a
most bewilderingly charming picture, which moved even her father to
admiring comment.

"Only," he added, "look before you step over a log when you're afoot.
The fangs of a big diamond-back are three-quarters of an inch long, my
dear, and they'll go through leather as a needle goes through cambric."

"Thanks, dad--and here endeth the usual lesson."

Cardross said to Hamil: "One scarcely knows what to think about the
snakes here. The records of the entire Union show few deaths in a year,
and yet there's no scarcity of rattlers, copperheads, and moccasins in
this Republic of ours. I know a man, an ornithologist, who for twelve
years has wandered about the Florida woods and never saw a rattler. And
yet, the other night a Northern man, a cottager, lighted his cigar after
dinner and stepped off his veranda on to a rattler."

"Was he bitten?"

"Yes. He died in two hours." Cardross shrugged and gathered up his
bridle. "Personally I have no fear; leggings won't help much; besides, a
good-sized snake can strike one's hand as it swings; but our cracker
guides go everywhere in thin cotton trousers and the Seminoles are
barelegged. One hears often enough of escapes, yet very rarely of
anybody being bitten. One of my grove guards was struck by a moccasin
last winter. He was an awfully sick nigger for a while, but he got over
it."

"That's cheerful," said Hamil, laughing.

"Oh, you might as well know. There are plenty of wiseacres who'll tell
you that nobody's in danger at these East Coast resorts, and the hotel
people will swear solemnly there isn't a serpent in the State; but there
are, Hamil, and plenty of them. I've seen rattlers strike without
rattling; and moccasins are ugly brutes that won't get out of the way
for you and that give no warning when they strike; and all quail hunters
in the flat-woods know how their pointers and setters are killed, and
every farmer knows that the best watchmen he can have is a flock of
guinea-fowl or turkeys or a few hogs loose. The _fact_ is that deadly
snakes are not rare in many localities; the _wonder_ is that scarcely a
death is reported in a year. How many niggers die, I don't know; but I
know enough, when I'm in the woods or fields, to look every time before
I put my foot upon the ground."

"How can you see in the jungle?"

"You've _got_ to see. Besides, rattlers are on the edge of thickets, not
inside. They've got to have an open space to strike the small furry
creatures which they live on. Moccasins affect mud--_look_ there!"

Both horses shyed; in front Shiela's mount was behaving badly, but even
while she was mastering him she tried at the same time to extract her
shotgun from the leather boot. Stent rode up and drew it out for her;
Hamil saw her break and load, swing in the saddle, and gaze straight
into an evil-looking bog all set with ancient cypress knees and the
undulating snaky roots of palmettos.

"A perfectly enormous one, dad!" she called back.

"Wait!" said Cardross; "I want Hamil to see." And to Hamil: "Ride
forward; you ought to know what the ugly brutes look like!"

As he drew bridle at Shiela's left the girl, still intent, pointed in
silence; but he looked in vain for the snake, mistaking every palmetto
root for a serpent, until she leaned forward and told him to sight along
her extended arm. Then he saw a dull gray fold without any glitter to
it, draped motionless over a palmetto root, and so like the root that he
could scarcely believe it anything else.

"That?"

"Yes. It's as thick as a man's arm."

"Is it a moccasin?"

"It is; a cotton-mouth."

The guide drawled: "Ah reckon he's asleep, Miss Cahdhoss. Ah'll make him
rare up 'f yew say so."

"Make him rear up," suggested Gray. "And stand clear, Hamil, because
Shiela must shoot quick if he slides for the water."

The men backed their nervously snorting horses, giving her room; Stent
dismounted, picked up a pig-nut, and threw it accurately. Instantly the
fat mud-coloured fold slipped over the root and a head appeared rising
straight out of the coils up into the air--a flat and rather small head
on a horribly swollen body, stump-tailed, disgusting. The head was
looking at them, stretched high, fully a third of the creature in the
air. Then, soundlessly, the wide-slitted mouth opened; and Hamil saw its
silky white lining.

"Moccasins stand their ground," said the girl, raising her gun. The shot
crashed out; the snake collapsed. For fully a minute they watched; not a
fold even quivered.

"Struck by lightning," said Gray; "the buzzards will get him." And he
drew a folding butterfly net from his saddle boot, affixed ring and
gauze bag, and cantered forward briskly in the wake of a great velvety
black butterfly which was sailing under the live-oaks above his head.

His father, wishing to talk to Eudo Stent, rode ahead with the guide,
leaving Shiela and Hamil to follow.

The latter reined in and waited while the girl leisurely returned the
fowling-piece to its holster. Then, together, they walked their horses
forward, wading the "branch" which flowed clear as a trout stream out
of the swamp on their right.

"It looks drinkable," he said.

"It is, for Crackers; but there's fever in it for you, Mr. Hamil....
Look at Gray! He's missed his butterfly. But it's a rather common
one--the black form of the tiger swallow-tail. Just see those
zebra-striped butterflies darting like lightning over the palmetto
scrub! Gray and I could never catch them until one day we found a ragged
one that couldn't fly and we placed it on a leaf; and every time one of
those butterflies came our way it paused in its flight for a second and
hovered over the ragged one. And that's how Gray and I caught the swift
Ajax butterflies for his collection!... I've helped him considerably, if
you please; I brought him the mysterious Echo moth from Ormond, and a
wonderful little hornet moth from Jupiter Inlet."

She was rattling on almost feverishly, never looking at him, restless in
her saddle, shifting bridle, adjusting stirrups, gun-case, knotting and
reknotting her neckerchief, all with that desperate attempt at composure
which betrays the courage that summons it.

"Shiela, dear!"

"What!" she said, startled into flushed surprise.

"Look at me."

She turned in her saddle, the colour deepening and waning on her white
skin from neck to temples; and sustained his gaze to the limit of
endurance. Then again in her ears sounded the soft crash of her senses;
he swung wide in his stirrups, looking recklessly into her eyes. A
delicate sense of intoxication stilled all speech between them for a
moment. Then, head bowed, eyes fixed on her bridle hand, the other hand,
ungloved, lying hotly unresponsive in his, she rode slowly forward at
his side. Face to face with all the mad unasked questions of destiny and
fate and chance still before her--all the cold problems of truth and
honour still to be discussed with that stirring, painful pulse in her
heart which she had known as conscience--silently, head bent, she rode
into the west with the man she must send away.

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