"I was hurt.... Then I supposed that you did not mean it. Besides"she looked up with her rare smile"I knew you, Mr. Hamil, in the boat this morning. I haven't really been very dreadful."
"You knew even then?"
"Yes, I did. The Palm Beach News published your picture a week ago; and I read all about the very remarkable landscape architect who was coming to turn the Cardross jungle into a most wonderful Paradise."
"You knew me all that time?"
"All of it, Mr. Hamil."
"From the moment you climbed into my boat?"
"Practically. Of course I did not look at you very closely at first.... Does that annoy you? It seems to or something does, for even in the dusk I can see your ever-ready blush"
"I don't know why you pretend to think me such a fool," he protested, laughing; "you seemed to take that for granted from the very first."
"Why not? You persistently talked to me when you didn't know meyou're doing it now for that matter!and you began by telling me that I was fool-hardy, not really courageous in the decent sense of the word, and that I was a self-conscious stick and a horribly inhuman and unnatural object generallyand all because I wouldn't flirt with you"
His quick laughter interrupted her. She ventured to laugh a little tooa very little; and that was the charm of her to himthe clear-eyed, delicate gravity not lightly transformed. But when her laughter came, it came as such a surprisingly lovely revelation that it left him charmed and silent.
"I wonder," she said, "if you can be amusingexcept when you don't mean to be."
"If you'll give me a chance to try"
"Perhaps. I was hardly fair to you in that boat."
"If you knew me in the boat this morning, why did you not say so?"
"Could I admit that I knew you without first pretending I didn't? Hasn't every woman a Heaven-given right to travel in a circle as the shortest distance between two points?"
"Certainly; only"
She shook her head slowly. "There's no use in my telling you who I am, now, considering that I can't very well escape exposure in the near future. That might verge on effronteryand it's horrid enough to be here with youin spite of several thousand people tramping about within elbow touch.... Which reminds me that my own party is probably hunting for me.... Such a crowd, you know, and so easy to become separated. What do you suppose they'd think if they suspected the truth? And the worst of it is that I cannot afford to do a thing of this sort.... You don't understand; but you may some daypartly. And then perhaps you'll think this matter all over and come to a totally different conclusion concerning my overlooking your recent rudeness andand my consenting to speak to you."
"You don't believe for one moment that I could mistake it"
"It depends upon what sort of a man you really are.... I don't know. I give you the benefit of all doubts."
She stood silent, looking him candidly in the eyes, then with a gesture and the slightest shrug, she turned away toward the white road outside. He was at her elbow in two steps.
"Oh, yesthe irony of formality."
She nodded. "Good night, then, Mr. Hamil. If circumstances permitted it would have been delightfulthis putting off the cloak of convention and donning motley for a little unconventional misbehaviour with you.... But as it is, it worries meslightlyas 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 aparttemporarily and informally close together, paralleling each other's course through life for the span of half an hourhere 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 soso physically youthful with even a hint of almost childish immaturity!and then to hear you as you arewitty, 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-possessionand the half-disdainful sword-play of your witat 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? Anddo 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 gofor a momentto-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 tothe others?"
And as he said nothing:
"If I weredifferentI'd simply tell them the truth. I could afford to. Besides we'll all know you before very long. Then we'll seeoh, yes, both of uswhether we have been foolishly wise to become companions in our indiscretion, orotherwise.... And don't worry about my home-arrival. That's my lawnthere where that enormous rubber-banyan tree straddles across the stars.... Is it not quaintthe tangle of shrubbery all over jasmine?and those are royal poincianas, if you pleaseand 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 andoh, 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 dreadfulis 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 Calypsoin your thoughts."
"What you ask I had given you the first moment we met."
"Then you may call me Calypsoin your thoughts."
"Calypso," he pleaded, "won't you tell me where to find you?"
"Yes; in the house ofMr. 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 gardensa 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 himso many dozens of old ladies and gentlemen, all so remarkably alike in a common absence of distinguishing traitsa 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 café.
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 Rawleyprobably 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. "Nodon't come near me; I'm not even in complete negligée 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.