Chapter IX: Part 9

"Right. I'll come. This engine's a bit groggy somewhere. I thought so as we ran in. Careless blighter, Jones." He washed his hands in the sea and came up, putting on his coat. "I hate messing about with machinery. I know next to nothing about it and if I can't get it right at once I have an unholy desire to smash. I've no patience with things I don't understand."

"That's why you're so impatient with me sometimes," she said to herself,--enormously surprised that she didn't say it aloud. Obviously something was happening to her. She liked the way in which he had set out the lunch and put the cushion so that the sun wouldn't fall on her face. It was competent,--and she admired that. He was taller than he had seemed to be on board and his grey eyes had a most intriguing way of going black.

Franklin hid behind an abrupt and hard-forced casualness, very conscious of having made a complete idiot of himself. He told her everything that there was to eat, knowing very well that her quick eyes had at once made an inventory, and looked after her with a rapid politeness. He immediately entered into a long, detailed account of a most uninteresting hunting trip in Central Africa and watched her like a hawk to pounce if she made any reference to bathing or beaches. Also he talked her down when she made one or two tentative efforts to lead the conversation to something human and wilfully became more technical and dry and endless.

Finally, having strained every nerve to stand it for his sake, she gave a little scream, and he stopped. But before he could ask what was the matter she said: "Nothing's bitten me and I haven't seen smugglers. I'm simply fed up with red monkies and Croo-boys and the whole of Central Africa. Tell me just one thing. How do you feel after eating four hard-boiled eggs running?"

He chuckled. "Hungry," he said, and got off his sweating horse. She was not going to hold him up to ridicule, and he was grateful.

They sat for a long time over lunch,--Franklin with his back to a rock and a well-worn pipe going; Beatrix leaning back on her hands with her hat off and the light on her hair. Suddenly Franklin sprang up. "Fog coming over," he said sharply. He stood over her and held out his hand.

She took it and he jerked her to her feet. She looked out and saw the _Galatea_ a long way off, disappearing behind what seemed to be a solid wall of grey smoke. "Does it matter?"

"Yes. We'll leave these things. Nip into the launch quick and I'll make a dash for the yacht." He gave her arm an impatient tap and she caught up her hat and got in. Hauling out the pin he threw it aboard, jumped into the stern, started the engine and backed out, turning with a swing when he was clear. The sea was at the stand, due to go out. Already the cowlike call of fog signals had begun far off. But he had taken his line for the yacht and went for her. "With ordinary luck we shall make her," he said. "I wish you'd brought your coat."

The fog rolled over them. Minutes before it had put out the sun. "What fun!" laughed Beatrix. "It will make my hair curl."

"It'll make mine like astrakhan," he said, "if this cursed engine begins any tricks. It's missing fire now, damn the thing!"

"Don't mind me," said Beatrix airily, "if you really feel the need to swear."

"I shan't."

She looked all around. There was nothing to see except a monotony of greyness. They were pushing through a thick, damp, mysterious series of closely hung veils that dragged softly across her face, it wasn't pleasant or funny. It was,--but with Franklin at her elbow it was disloyal even to let the word take shape in her mind. If only she had brought her coat, her thickest coat. She had hardly anything on. How melancholy those sea-voices were. She hated eerie sounds. She saw Franklin bend suddenly over the engine and pry and touch and say things under his breath. Every now and then the thing had furious palpitation. Then it seemed to her to be quarrelling together and throwing its parts about. It kicked and wheezed and struggled like a held rooster,--and stopped. She began to shiver. A dozen distant cows seemed to be calling anxiously for their young. She could hardly see the peak of the launch. She wasn't frightened. Only just a little anxious, or rather uncomfortable. She loved new things but this was, undoubtedly and without argument, too new.

"Hell!" said Franklin.

"Thank you," she replied. "You've said it for me."

He peered into her face. "Shall I tell you what's happened or not? I mean do you want to face things or be coddled?"

"I thought you were beginning to know me," she said.

"Right. Now listen. This dirty little engine's playing the fool. I've done everything I know to it, even to whispering endearing terms. But in one word, it beats me."

She nodded brightly, rubbing her thinly-clad knees together and putting her hands under her arms. "I see," she said. "Well?"

"That means that we're completely at the mercy of this rotten fog, and presently we shall drift out, maybe into trade lines. Hear the bellows of the freighters? We may be out all night with nothing to eat and drink and the risk of being run down."

Her attempt at pluck was heroic. "There aren't any nice, soft, cozy Jaeger dressing gowns in the locker, by any chance?"

"The Vanderdykes are all right," said Franklin, with queer enthusiasm. He pulled off his flannel coat. "Put this on."

"No, no."

"Put this on."

"I won't put it on."

He wasted no further words. He took first one soft damp arm and then the other, drew the sleeves over them, bent down and buttoned the coat up.

"Oh, that's lovely," she said; "as warm as a radiator. But what about you?"

"That's all right. Listen again. When McLeod finds that we don't get back he'll probably send off the big launch to hunt us up. The only way I can give them a line is to keep shouting. Very likely, giving me credit for being less a confounded fool than I am, he'll imagine two things,--either that I got off before the fog lowered and am able to fake the engine if anything happens to it, or that, seeing the fog coming over, I decided to stay on the island, in which case it would be possible for him to feel his way to land and pick us off. As it is, there's no compass aboard and I've no means of telling which way we're drifting, and if the fog lasts all night,--puzzle, find the yacht. There you have the worst and the best of it. Listen!"

"What is it?"

He put his hands up to his mouth and raised a tremendous shout. "Ahoy,--_Galatea_, ahoy, ahoy!"

There was no answer. The sound seemed to fall dead, as though up against a wall.

"Um," he said, and stood amidships with his legs wide apart and with the utmost precision, with regular pauses, turning his head to right and left, sent out long, steady calls. Some power-boat, feeling her way in from fishing, might come within hail and give them a tow, or the big launch might be poking about for them and pick up his voice. Good God, to think that he had lived to be a man without being able to master a damn fool engine! That was one of the worst points of being able to buy service. It plucked initiative out of the brain like the bones out of fish. "_Galatea, ... Galatea_.... Ahoy."

How extraordinary it was, she thought, sitting all together, as close as she could get to herself. They were like two children lost in the woods,--two people, both of whom had been able to buy the earth, played a trick upon and shown that the earth was no more theirs than any other man's,--two people cut off, brought all the way down the great ladder with a run, to the desire for charity,--two people, young and wilful and proud and vain, who had come together by a lie, been kept together by a condition of nature against which they, for all their money, and youth and supreme confidence, were utterly impotent,--two people mutually aware of being man and woman drifting together in a new life to death, perhaps....

"_Galatea, Galatea_, ahoy."

She gave a little cry of wonder and fright.

In an instant he was bending over her. "What can I do?"

"Nothing else," she said, smiling up at him.

"You're shivering."

"Oh, no. I'm only--cool. That's all."

He flung open the locker. There was nothing in it but his bathing suit. He had left a big, thick towel on the rocks to dry. He seemed to have left everything on the rocks,--including his wits. There was nothing to put round her.

"_Galatea,--Galatea_, ahoy."

He was an hour making up his mind what to do. During that time, listening hard for any near signal or answering call, he shouted and kept up a jerky conversation, talking to Beatrix as though she were a child, trying to make her laugh with futile jokes that he would have sworn he couldn't have remembered. Like a Trojan she played up and duly laughed with chattering teeth and many times whipped in quickly with an "Ahoy" herself to help him out.

Suddenly she began to whimper. She couldn't help it. She was so cold and so frightened and to her it seemed as though this were the end of everything.

And that decided him. He picked her up and sat down, put her in his lap, wound his arms round her and put his cheek against her cheek. This girl-child must have all his warmth. He was responsible for this inefficient business. The fool engine had beat him.... She was no longer in his blood. She was a beautiful human thing who must be kept from crying, kept warm, kept alive. The sex in him was utterly dormant. The desire to preserve had conquered it. He was a worried, anxious man with a delicate lovely thing on his hands and it was his fault, curse him, that she was whimpering and chilled and horribly uncomfortable and up against death perhaps. At any moment they might be run down,--at a loose end, out there among the veils. And he held all her softness tight to him and presently began to rub her,--shoulders and arms and legs, to make her blood circulate, to stop her from whimpering, saying the sort of things that men always say to children who have hurt themselves, silly, little, queer things, over and over again.

It was wonderful.... He was so strong and fine, and she cuddled up to his big chest and put her arms about him and gave herself up, wholly, without a qualm. With the same regularity he threw up his head and shouted and she heard the rumble of his voice, and for a long time he held her and rubbed, never letting her blood stop, only cutting into his murmur of comfort by shouting:

"_Galatea,--Galatea_, ahoy."

The boat was drifting. The water gave it no more than a gentle rock. She shut her eyes and smiled. She had retained the mind of a woman with the body of a child. It was brilliantly clear to her that out there, then, in that drifting boat, all among those closely hung veils of damp web, the spirit of this man was alight, and that in his hands, that had been so hot and eager to touch, there was now the supreme tenderness that is without passion. It was wonderful. It was not happening. This was not earth. He, such a man, who had kissed her foot and put his cheek against her breast, and she, who had exulted in her power to stir and draw on. It must be Heaven. Their clashes and outbursts were over. They had died together and met again in spirit. She had never dreamed of anything like this.

"_Galatea,--Galatea_, ahoy," yelled Franklin. It was the pit-pit of an engine that came to his tired brain.

"Ahoy to you."

It was not Heaven. It was earth and they were alive and that was Jones's voice. She cuddled closer and her heart began to thump. She didn't want to be taken away.

"At last," said Franklin. "Steady, Jones," he called out. "We're drifting. Slide up alongside and take us on. We're cold.... Well played, little girl," and he kissed her on the mouth.

That night he insisted upon her having dinner in bed. Ah, how good that steaming, hot bath had been.

Afterwards, strained and very, very tired, she fell asleep at once, and went back to the little beach with its vague patterns of sea-weed on yellow sand, and they swam again and dried in the sun, and talked and laughed, and he lay at her feet, brown and clean-cut, with burning eyes,--but when he picked her up this time and carried her to the cave she held him tight and found his lips and lay with him on the warm sand....

It must have been midnight when she woke suddenly and put her hand out to touch his face.

It was not true. She was alone,--and she loved him so!

*XXXIV*

It was exactly half-past nine the following morning when Jones rapped at the door of the Captain's stateroom. The dancing sailor registered the note of irritation in the shout of "Come" with a comic grievance and went in to find McLeod struggling to remove a recalcitrant beard with a very disagreeable razor. There was, God knows, every reason for a touch of temper mixed with that sort of amazement that a man feels when an old and true friend goes back on him. Shaving at the best of times is a penance, at the worst a catastrophe. The Captain was a clean-shaven man in the middle forties and although, as one of the Esau tribe, he had used a razor since he was eighteen; he had failed to understand the peculiar psychology of steel and to appreciate the fact that the blade of a razor is just as temperamental and just as much affected by the vagaries of liver as the average human being. He made no allowances.

"What is it, Jones?"

"Sorry ter disturb you, sir, but there's a launch comin' up on the port side with Mr. Fraser aboard. Thought you'd like ter know, sir."

"Have you told Mr. Franklin?"

"No, sir. Considered it my duty ter report it ter you, sir."

"Well, nip round to Mr. Franklin and tell him, will you? I don't see what M.F. wants to trail us for unless it's something important."

And so Jones nipped, little knowing that Malcolm's unexpected visit was to bring about a new crisis in the lives of Franklin and Beatrix.

Only just dressed, Franklin followed Jones out in time to see Malcolm come aboard. "Why, hello, my dear fellow," he called out with immense cordiality, "you're just in time for breakfast." It seemed an age since he had seen his friend.

The sky was clear again, the sun warm and gracious, the sea just lively enough to make the yacht dance. The fog which had come from nowhere for no reason had gone back in the same mood. Franklin had slept in one solid, dreamless piece. All was well with the world.

There was a whimsical smile on Malcolm's cherubic face. "I wasn't quite sure that I should be welcome," he said, dying to know how things were going. "The word breakfast never sounded so well to me. I'm ravenous. Where's Beatrix?"

"Not up yet. Come to the dining saloon." He took Malcolm's arm and led him off, delighted to see him.

"Just a second," said Malcolm. "I think you'd better tell McLeod to turn the yacht about at once. It'll save time."

Franklin drew up. "Turn the yacht about? Why?"

"I have a good reason for breaking in on your triumphant isolation," said Malcolm, "little as you appear to suspect it, and if you----"

He stopped speaking. Beatrix was coming towards them. His heart turned at the sight of her. Never in his life had he seen her looking so radiant and lovely and like a rose with all its sweetest leaves still folded, and in her expression there was something so new in its sunny peacefulness that he caught his breath with surprise.

"Malcolm," she cried out, and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him like a sister. He had expected to see a caged bird beating her wings and to be rushed at as one who brought a reprieve. His curiosity nearly forced him into personalities.

"How nice of you to look us up," she said, taking his other arm. "You're just in time for breakfast."

The word breakfast used by them both struck the most intimate note. It is the most domestic of all words. The first stab of jealousy that Malcolm had ever felt made him, before he could master himself, break their astounding atmosphere of contentment, this elysium of peace.

"Mrs. Keene is very ill," he said, sharply. "Ida Larpent and I have done what we could for two days but she's crying continually for you. I drove along the coast as fast as I could and unless you come back with me I don't know what may happen."

Beatrix turned and looked at Franklin. He read in her eyes an appeal to put her quickly at the side of the little lady whose devotion was dog-like. He was wrong. The look she gave him was full of anguish at the thought of leaving him and the sort of half-hope that he would play the tyrant and the bully and refuse to let her go.

"Jones," he sang out.

"Sir?"

"Ask Captain McLeod to see me at once."

"Very good, sir."

"Malcolm, take Beatrix into the dining saloon. I'll join you in about five minutes."

And as Beatrix went on with Malcolm, all her appetite for breakfast gone, she said to herself with the inevitable unreasonableness of a woman in love, "He doesn't care, he doesn't care. Any pretty girl would do as well. He's glad to let me go."

Franklin met McLeod. "Mrs. Franklin must go ashore as soon as you can get her there. Mrs. Lester Keene is very ill. Mr. Fraser has a car waiting and he will drive my wife back to where we landed the party the other day,--Jones in charge. I can't be trusted with an engine now, y'know. I shall drive with them and come aboard again when you turn up, which you will do with best possible speed. Get that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right." He waved his hand and went below to his own sanctum. His valet was busy in the bedroom. "Moffat, pack things for me for a couple of days, and tell the stewardess to do the same for Mrs. Franklin. Sharp's the word. We're leaving the yacht in half-an-hour."

Then he went to breakfast, having set things on the move in his characteristic way. Beatrix and Malcolm were talking generalities in a rather strained manner. The thoughts of both were busy. It was very obvious to Malcolm that something had happened to Beatrix. Her whole attitude, as well as her expression, had changed. She even seemed to be dressed differently in some subtle way. She was, too, he thought, less young, less confident, less on the defensive, less consistently brilliant, less all-in-the-shop-window,--more like the little girl who had tucked herself into his heart.

"What happened?" asked Franklin, doing more than justice to a liberal helping of scrambled eggs a Ludovic.

He'd never be able to eat so well if he cared, thought Beatrix.

Malcolm's eyes were clear again. He was less than the dust to the heroine of his boyhood and he had prayed that she might be won by Pel. After all, he was a poet.

"Well," he said, "that kind, good soul began by having hysterics on the quay. She was the first to realize, presumably because of a long course of novel reading, that we had been emptied away like rubbish and that the _Galatea_ had turned seawards with Beatrix."

Franklin nodded and drank deeply of strong coffee.

Beatrix respected him for drinking strong, black stuff with breakfast, but she would have given days of her life to have had just one smile from him then.

"I knew the one-eyed place on which we had been dumped, took charge of the three women--saving Mrs. Keene from a watery grave--and drove to the one possible inn. Quite by accident I had some money on me. Helene and I did what we could to soothe Mrs. Keene but she took to bed and sprang a high temperature. The local doctor attended her and called it a nervous breakdown and that's what, being in the confidence of you both, I believe it is. Mrs. Larpent surprised me by being very kind and sympathetic, which shows how foolish it is to judge a woman by her jewelry and the way she does her hair. We have had a very worrying time. Finally I made up my mind to hire a car and drive along the coast until I came level with you. I started before daybreak and here I am. Mrs. Keene never ceases to call for Beatrix and I promised to bring her back. You will both help me to keep my promise, I know."

"Well, of course," said Franklin.

"Well, of course," echoed Beatrix. Conceive it, Beatrix,--an echo! Love plays strange tricks upon humanity.

Franklin went on eating. "We leave on the big launch in twenty minutes. We shall drive back in your car and stay at the inn until the _Galatea_ anchors off the quay."

"Thank you," said Malcolm. "The sight of Beatrix will do Mrs. Keene more good than buckets of medicine."

Beatrix turned to Franklin. "Does 'we' include you?" she asked, with what Malcolm thought was a most curious and startling note of humbleness.

"Rather," said Franklin.

Whereupon Beatrix began to eat.

Sitting in the shade of the veranda of the inn Ida Larpent killed time with a new sense of hope.

*XXXV*

It was nearly four o'clock that afternoon when the dust-covered car arrived at Malcolm's one-eyed place some miles from Charleston, South Carolina. It was a long, tedious, hot drive through country which Beatrix called untidily picturesque. The telegraph posts along the roads leaned at rakish angles. Everywhere there were cotton fields with irregular lines of plants from which the blossoms had fallen, dilapidated shacks with piccaninnies playing about them and uncorseted colored women squatting on the stoops. Strange washing hung out to dry with great frequency and every now and then there was a fine Colonial house with a garden alight with flowers.

The inn, or hotel, as it insisted on being called, was the only building in the settlement which seemed to have received a coat of white paint for many moons and it was obviously the centre of attraction. Three rather carelessly treated Fords were parked near its main entrance and two drummers were rocking on the unwashed stoop with soft damp cigars tucked into the corners of their mouths. Little families of chickens ran after their conscientious mothers around the building and several turkeys stalked aimlessly here and there like actors out for a walk. Numerous outhouses leaned against each other for support,--one or two of them showing an ingenuity in repair that was almost Irish. On the walls of several were pasted glaring bills of motion picture plays then being shown in Charleston, and one was entirely given up to the glorification in large letters of a certain small pill. There was, indeed, a curious intimacy, a sort of who-cares-a-whoop air about the whole place. You could tease the turkeys, scatter the chickens, grin at the Fords and spit with the drummers. It was Carolina and hot and the cotton was coming on. What the deuce, anyway!

From the beginning of the journey to the end of it Franklin hardly opened his mouth. Watched surreptitiously by Beatrix, he sat silent and peculiarly distrait, like a man who was either working out an engrossing problem or bored to extinction. After several dogged attempts to get him to talk, Malcolm gave him up and for some miles devoted himself entirely to Beatrix. To her he told everything funny that he had ever heard or invented without winning a smile. She too was as far away and as unresponsive as Franklin. And so, giving them both up, Malcolm joined the sphinxes and let his imagination run loose. When this unsociable party halted for lunch at a wayside inn the conspiracy of silence was broken, but only as it would have been by three people who were total strangers thrown together briefly. The few necessary commonplaces were said. Franklin and Beatrix went on thinking and Malcolm continued to imagine what they were thinking about. The driver of the hired car, a middle-aged man who had married an argumentative woman in his youth, gave a great deal of slow consideration to the matter. His sense of beauty pulled his sympathy towards Beatrix, but his sense of brotherhood impelled him to stand by Franklin in what he decided must be a matrimonial bust-up, and so he remained neutral as far as they were concerned and concentrated pity upon Malcolm, to whom, luckily, sleep eventually came.

Franklin was suffering from inevitable reaction. He had returned to earth from a dream. He had come back to a very practical world from the land of make-believe. He had fallen from the unnatural height of a sublime, passionless love to the natural level of a man whose passion pounded on the walls of his heart and ran like electricity through his veins. Out of the brief mist which had shut out the truth of things he stared to find that Beatrix was as far away from him as ever. He was in the pit of depression, especially as he had a feeling that any chance he might have had to win Beatrix was gone now that she had left the yacht. It seemed to him that she had escaped.

As for Beatrix, who had felt the beat of Franklin's heart against her breast and would smilingly have gone beyond the outpost of eternity in his arms, reaction came with a shock that left her with no other desire than to cry. Suddenly to have found herself and the meaning of life; suddenly, out there in the fog, to have seen the sense and sanity of things and burgeoned into a woman under the warmth of love and dreamed all night of its fulfilment and then to waken to _this_,--a man who neither looked at her nor spoke, who hustled her from the yacht and would probably leave her with her friends and go his way. If he had loved her as well as been stirred by the attraction of her sex he must have told her so that morning. This was the end of all her arguments. Having her at his mercy he let her go, she told herself bitterly. Probably he had escorted her to shore to renew his flirtation with Ida Larpent. Ah! That was it. Malcolm had said that she had remained at the hotel. She wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Larpent woman had bribed Malcolm to come to the yacht with his tale of woe ... and when, as the car drew up, Ida Larpent sauntered out wearing one of her most enigmatical smiles and a very becoming frock the hitherto unknown demon of jealousy seized Beatrix in his burning grasp and for the first time in her life she became the little sister of all womankind, a girl whose wealth had turned to ashes and whose autocracy fell about her like dead leaves.

"How's Brownie?" She ignored Mrs. Larpent's hand and cheek, and passed into the house without waiting for an answer. The screen door went back with a clang.

"Good Lord," said Franklin, summing up the whole place in one rapid glance, "what a filthy hole!"

Malcolm pointed to the chickens. "But look at these," he laughed, refreshed.

"Welcome," said Ida Larpent, not so much clasping Franklin's hand as embracing it. She had the knack. "It's good to see you again. Life has its compensations."

"Thanks."

"Quite a good sort, after all," thought Franklin. "Ripping hat. Always makes me feel like a man who goes behind the scenes after the last act."

A white-haired, chatty negro led Beatrix up two flights of carpetless stairs, along a narrow echoing passage to a door almost at the end of it.

"Don't knock," said Beatrix, and paid him with a smile.

The room was bare and large and barn-like. Its three large windows were screened. Its stained floor was rubbed and almost colorless. There was a cheap writing desk of yellow wood, a glass-topped dressing table to match, a stand with a water bottle on it and a shiver-inspiring white cuspidor beneath, several strips of thin-worn string matting and a lamp hanging from the centre of a none too clean ceiling.

Mrs. Lester Keene was lying on a bed with brass knobs which sagged perceptibly in the middle. Beatrix tip-toed to it and went down on her knees and put her arms round the little lady's shoulders. "Brownie dear, I've come," she said.

There was a great maternal cry, and a passion of tears.

"That's right. Weep, Brownie, my dear little Brownie, it will do you good. You were frightened for me, weren't you? The others wondered what was the matter with you, but you and I know, don't we? There are no secrets between us and now you'll get well, won't you? I'm so sorry!"

And the little woman clung weakly and fondly and stroked the face of the beautiful girl who meant so much to her and for whom she liked to think that she was responsible. "Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, "you don't know what agonies I've been through, or how dreadful it was to see the yacht going away and you alone and unprotected with that man."

"Was it possible that _I_ called him 'that man' then?" thought Beatrix.

"I've been nearly distraught to think of all the indignities that you have had to suffer. I could not close my eyes for fear of seeing unspeakable pictures, though at night I thought I could hear you calling to me to come and help you and you so young and proud and fine and helpless. Oh--oh! and are you all right? Will you swear that you're all right?"

"Yes, Brownie dear, I'm all right. Can't you see that I'm all right?" But there were tears on her cheeks and a pain at her heart because she was so much all wrong. Couldn't he have said just one word all day, just one, to show her that she meant more to him than a mere woman,--after all that they had been through between life and death? Couldn't he have given her one look to show that he was something besides merely a man and that he had held her so perfectly in his arms and kept her warm to love and comfort and hold always, always?

"Then why are you crying?" demanded Mrs. Keene, sharply.

"You make me cry, Brownie, to see you like this."

"I make you cry? _You!_" The voice was incredulous, skeptical, amazed. The elderly companion whose dog-like devotion and affection had not blinded her to the faults of this gold-child, this artificial flower born and reared in a house of egregious wealth, helped herself up in the bed and peered into the girl's face. "There is something wrong! I hardly know you. Tell me, tell me!" Her voice was thin and shrill from anxiety and fear.

The girl's eyes fell a little and a sob shook her shoulders.

"_Oh, my God! What has that man done to you?_"

Beatrix put a finger on her lips but the old note of command had gone. "Hush, Brownie, hush," she said gently. "Don't cry out like that, dear. You'll make yourself ill again."

The little woman's face grew whiter. "Oh, my darling!" she blurted out, conscience-stricken, "if only I had been able to look after you, if only I had been strong enough to refuse to leave you! You don't know what you mean to me. I know I've been useless and weak. I know I've never really been able to direct or guide you but I've done my best, darling, and it will kill me to think that you, _you_, who have seemed to me like a princess in a fairy tale, so pure and fine, have been hurt by this man. Oh, my dear, what has that man done to you?"

"Listen, Brownie. That man has made me come all the way down to earth. That man has taken everything from me,--pride and scorn and shallowness, the desire to experiment, the impatience of possession, and put there instead something that makes me want to go and sit down at the side of women with children and hold their hands. That man has brought me up to truth and reason. He has made me human and humble and jealous and eager for his touch. He has made me love him and need him and want to serve him. Look at me, Brownie, look at me and see it for yourself!"

She held up her lovely, tear-stained face, the face that Malcolm had described, the picture of which was locked up in his heart. And Mrs. Keene, speechless, looked and saw and wondered.

And suddenly the golden head was crushed against the childless bosom. "Brownie, Brownie, he doesn't love me, he doesn't love me, and I wish I were dead."

Could this be Beatrix,--this?

*XXXVI*

Finding that Franklin had left the bedroom that had been allotted to him after washing and changing his clothes,--the others had been flung about the barrack-like room,--Malcolm went downstairs and out to the veranda. Ida Larpent was sitting in front of a tea-table like Patience on a monument, dodging mosquitoes.

"Where's Pelham?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

"I was going to ask you."

"And Beatrix?"

"In with Mrs. Keene, I think."

Mrs. Larpent heaved a little sigh. "Poor old thing! She'll get well now, and we, I take it, can go our ways in peace. I don't ever want to go through this experience again."

Malcolm laughed. "Well, I've rather enjoyed it," he said, "apart, of course, from the fact that Mrs. Keene has suffered."

"Enjoyed it?" There was a note of anger in Mrs. Larpent's clear voice. "Such food, such beds, such cockroaches, such service, such an appalling place?"

"I've been studying the beautiful unselfishness of the mother hen," said Malcolm. "It's a revelation to me."

Mrs. Larpent shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "I've known one or two other poets in my time," she said, "but I've never been able to make out whether their childishness was a pose or mere stupidity. It requires no study to know that the mother hen is not unselfish. Like other mothers she is the creature of overwhelming circumstances, the slave of nature. However, what's the news? What is to happen next? Is the _Galatea_ to deliver us back to New York or do we find our own way back?"

"Don't ask me," said Malcolm, who wouldn't have said anything else if he had known it. Mrs. Larpent was one of the few women of his acquaintance whom he really disliked. He found her hard and without an ounce of idealism or imagination. She believed in nothing that didn't carry a certificate of proof, in no one who was not duly entered in "Who's Who," looked upon faith as a sort of patent medicine, hope as a form of mental weakness and charity as a sharp way of getting rid of people who either made street noises or had pathetic stories to tell. He and she had not got on at all well.

To the great relief of both Franklin came up. "We're waiting tea for you," said Mrs. Larpent.

"I'm so sorry. I've been along to the post-office. I thought I'd better wire this address to the Vanderdykes as we shall be here till the _Galatea_ lies off. They had our next place of call for letters." He sat down rather heavily. "Yes, tea's a good idea."

There was nothing of happiness about this man, Mrs. Larpent told herself in a spirit of self-congratulation. He had obviously gained nothing by carrying off Beatrix except a little line between his eyebrows. Serve him right. She was glad to see it. She could have made him happy if the party had continued on the yacht.

Tea came but no Beatrix. Mrs. Larpent poured out, and as she did so her spirits rose. Things looked good. She had never been able to find a reason for their sham honeymoon, puzzle as she might. It remained an inscrutable mystery, and all her cunning endeavors to trick Mrs. Keene and Malcolm into confession had failed. She argued that they knew,--Malcolm because he brought Beatrix to the yacht and Mrs. Keene because of her extraordinary nervous breakdown. In any case that business failed to be of interest now. The point was how much, if at all, was Franklin in love with or physically attracted by Beatrix. If he was in love with her and had been turned down,--his whole appearance and attitude proved that,--her opportunity to catch him on the rebound was most excellent. In her large experience men committed matrimony or undertook obligations immediately after being refused. If he had been physically attracted merely, and had met with no success,--which was patent,--the same argument applied. How glad she was that she had seen the wisdom of staying in that abominable shack, ostensibly to look after the woman who got so completely on her nerves. Her room was next to Franklin's, too. Could luck have been kinder?

"Have you sent any tea up to Beatrix?" asked Franklin, suddenly.

"No," said Mrs. Larpent. "She'll order it herself if she wants any, don't you think so?"

Franklin got up. "Excuse me," he said, and stalked into the hotel, asked the comatose clerk the number of Mrs. Keene's room, waved away a gymnastic colored boy who volunteered to show him and went upstairs two at a time. Sooner or later he would be obliged, he had come to the conclusion, either to put as many thousand miles between himself and Beatrix as the map of the earth allowed or treat her as a sister. All the day's thinking had proved this to him, who knew so little about women.

He knocked on the door, waited and knocked again.

It was opened by Beatrix, who was still in her dust-covered clothes and hat. He saw at once that she had been crying and resented it as much as though he had seen her arm in a splint.

"Have you had tea?" he asked bluntly, because he wanted to kiss her beyond description and hadn't the right.

"No," said Beatrix.

"Shall I send some up?"

"Will you? I'd love it. I'm so tired."

"Yes, of course you are. Why didn't you ring and make this rotten hotel run about?"

"I forgot. It's awfully nice of you to have bothered about me."

Franklin swallowed a rush of words, nodded, made small work of the echoing stairs and stood in front of the unoffending clerk with eyes black with unexplainable anger. "Why the devil haven't you sent tea up to Mrs. Franklin? Don't argue. Get it done at once or I'll pull this barn down board by board. For two, with hot buttered toast. Quick!"

Two colored boys who had overheard these words and caught the clerk's eyes went off like demented athletes. Left standing, the clerk pulled himself together. He felt as though a cart load of bricks had fallen on his head. What was the matter with this man? Anyone would think he'd bought the darned earth!

Ida Larpent and Malcolm did most of the talking while Franklin drank three cups of tea and ate all the toast. Malcolm knew that before long he would be marched off somewhere to listen to his old pal's troubles and so he waited with his characteristic patience and all his sympathy on the boil, determined not to permit his curiosity to lead his imagination into any further maze. It seemed to him to be disloyal. Ida Larpent concentrated her strategic knowledge upon a plan of action to be carried into effect during the night. She must act quickly because Franklin, like Beatrix, went off at sudden tangents. He might take it into his head to leave the place at a moment's notice and she might not see him again for months.

"How are you going to kill time until the so-called dinner?" she asked, looking at Franklin. "Can I suggest anything?"

"No, thanks," he replied. "Malcolm and I are going to explore the quay, if there is such a thing."

She laughed softly. He could do what he liked with all the hours till midnight. The others at the beginning of a new day would be hers, if she knew anything of men and life. She opened a book.

Franklin got up, pushed the table away, dragged up a chair for Mrs. Larpent's feet, made a mental note of the fact that she was a good sort and took Malcolm's arm.

"Come on, old son," he said. "Let's get out of this."

Turkey and chickens made way for these tall creatures, the two drummers at the other end of the veranda concentrated a united gaze on Mrs. Larpent's ankles, a Ford went off with a harsh rattle carrying two men in their shirt sleeves, and a ragamuffinly kitten gave a marvelous imitation of a bucking horse and bolted up a tree.

As they faced the Atlantic Franklin squared his shoulders and drew in a long, grateful breath. The line went out of his forehead and his mouth relaxed. Here at any rate was an element that he understood in all its moods, rough and smooth.

"Malcolm, will you come to Europe with me?"

"Any time," said Malcolm.

"Right. To-morrow night, then. I wish to God I had an aeroplane. We'd get away sooner."

He looked round impatiently. The so-called quay might have been made away back before the Great Wind and carelessly patched together after it. It ran out into a small bay for the use of perhaps a dozen cat-boats, a couple of nice yawls, a very spruce shoal-draught sloop just in, a well put together lark and a number of dirty little power boats belonging to the negro fishermen. Several bankrupt-looking sheds added to the general neglected appearance of the whole scene, which was heightened by three carcasses of dead dories with all their ribs sticking out lying up on the beach and all among dry seaweed and rubbish.

"What's the particular hurry?" asked Malcolm.

Franklin turned upon him. "I'm sick of myself, sick of life, sick of the whole blessed show," he said. "I want to get right away. I want to put all the sea there is between myself and Beatrix. If anybody had told me before I went to the Vanderdykes that a bit of a girl was going to turn me into a first-class fool I'd have called him a sentimental crank."

"I know," said Malcolm. "It all depends on the girl, though. All wise men, all men who fathom the fact in time that life means nothing if it's selfish, fall over each other to be made first-class fools of by the right girl. Besides, who says you've been turned into a first-class fool? You love Beatrix without success. So do I. That doesn't make us fools, either of us. I hold that we have to thank our stars to have met her. The fool part of it would be in not having loved her. That's my view of it. And look here, Pel, old man, don't be quite so ready to call people sentimental cranks who talk about love. What are we here for? What's the use of living without it? Clubs are built for men who have missed the one good thing there is to win in this queer little interlude between something we can't remember and something we're not intended to know."

Franklin listened to this unexpected outburst with a sort of boyish gravity. Malcolm had the knack of saying things that were true, and this that he had just said, with uncharacteristic heat, was dead true. Franklin knew that. Moreover he had the honesty and the courage to say so.

"Quite right, old son. I was talking through my hat as usual. But the difference between you and me is this. You're a poet and when you're turned down you have the safety valve of verse. You can write about it. I'm only a common or garden sporting cove who has to grin and bear it. And when you've got a girl like Beatrix in your blood there isn't much grinning, believe me. Come on. Let's walk and I'll put you up to date."

And away they went arm in arm along the shore while the sun went down.

And up in her bare bedroom Beatrix gave herself eagerly into the hands of her maid. "If I look my best," she thought, "perhaps----"

Men and women and history,--repetition, that's all!

*XXXVII*

Dinner was fairly good. The word had been taken to the kitchen that Franklin might stalk in and kill the chef. That dark mass of humanity outdid himself in consequence. Life was very dear to him.

One of the waiters at Franklin's table had been fifteen years in the hotel. The other twelve. They mutually agreed behind the screen that there had never been two such beautiful ladies in its dining-room in their time. They too were on their mettle.

Beatrix played up. She had bathed and slept a little and poured out her heart to Brownie and felt better from the fact that her presence had done her old friend so much good. Besides, she had grit and the courage of a thoroughbred. She was not going to let anyone see that there was a pain in her heart if she died for it. And so she set the ball rolling and kept the table merry. It was well done.

Malcolm did his share and brought tears of laughter from everybody by describing a scandal-mongering conversation between two turkeys. The younger of the two waiters nearly had a fit. Ida Larpent was in excellent spirits and Franklin as cheery as he could always be when he tried.

Afterwards they adjourned to a ludicrously-furnished room called the drawing-room decorated with tortured wood and chairs which had obviously been designed by plumbers. Everything in it was the color of Virginia tobacco,--the epitome of biliousness. Here they played Bridge while the proprietor's over-plump daughter with a huge white bow on the top of her head giggled and whispered to several girl friends in the sun parlor and presently set a Victrola going. Between the tunes, which were redolent of Broadway, the click of billiard balls could be heard. Frogs in a nearby pond croaked their inevitable chorus.

At the end of the third rubber Beatrix rose. "I can't go on," she said. "There are so many distractions. It's almost like being in a railway accident. Take me down to look at the sea, Pelham."

Franklin led the way. He would have liked it better if she had been angry with him and there had been an excuse for quarreling. He might then have had a reason for blazing at her and losing his self-control. To be treated like a brother,--it was better than nothing, he supposed, but it made him feel like a man with his arms roped to his sides.

They went along the sandy road lined with curious stunted trees to the quay. A full moon dominated a sky that blazed with stars. There was not even the tail-end of a cloud. The lazy sea plopped heavily against the stanchions and made the small craft wobble from side to side. Ropes creaked and quivered. There was hardly any wind. On the tip of the quay a girl was sitting with her head on a man's shoulder. One of his arms was round her waist. Their legs dangled over the edge. It was a night for love.

Beatrix said nothing for several minutes. She stood hatless, with her hands behind her back and her shoulders square. She looked dangerously young, Franklin thought, and far too precious to be unguarded. But with another look he corrected himself,--so young that her confidence was a better guard than an armed man. He wondered what she was thinking about.

"You've never had a sister, have you?" she asked suddenly.

"No," said Franklin.

"What a pity."

"Why?"

"She would have been a lucky girl."

"There you are," thought Franklin. "Nothing but a brother, you see."

She faced him unexpectedly. "What are you going to do with me now?"

He knew his answer but he made it, "What do you want me to do with you?"

And she made hers, "Something must be done."

He stood looking at her. He had no inkling that they were at cross purposes because he was not a woman's man. Also because he was entirely without conceit. It was only when he dreamed and a miracle happened, that Beatrix returned his love. In her new state, which was so new that she felt almost a stranger in the world, Beatrix was without conceit too. She believed that Franklin, because she had seen the nobility of his character out there in that strange mist, had outgrown the attraction of her sex and had become brotherly. Some big moment was needed to startle these two young people who were so much alike into the truth,--these two who had always been handicapped by excessive wealth and whose lives had touched in a manner that was so bizarre and accidental. What if the big moment never came? Big moments are not put in the way of everybody and even if they are, go by unrecognized in so many instances.

"Yes," said Franklin, "we can't go on like this."

"You still think that the only way out is marriage?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And then divorce?"

"Yes."

Beatrix heaved a deep sigh. "I've asked so much of you. I couldn't ask you for that."

"You don't have to ask me. It's my suggestion."

"You certainly are a sportsman," she said. And then she gave a little gasp. "Good Heavens, what must I have been made of to have done that thing? It seems incredible as I look at it now."

He spoke wistfully, eagerly. "Does it? Why? You're the same Beatrix. You haven't changed."

"Are you the same Pelham Franklin? Haven't you changed? Let's be honest out here to-night. This is the hour for honesty with the moon so plain and the stars so gleaming and the sky so transparent. Besides, I can't tell you why, but I have a sort of premonition that you and I are going to be required to face another crisis. I got the feeling this afternoon, when I was lying down. A bird was singing outside my window, a curious, jerky little song, and it seemed to tell me that I must meet something squarely and with courage."

"Courage?" said Franklin. "You have that."

"You think so?"

"I don't know it if you haven't got it."

"That's the first really nice thing you've ever said to me, Pelham."

It was a pity that she couldn't see the queer thing that happened to his eyes. "I don't say everything I think," he said, with a sort of laugh.

"That's nothing to be proud of. There's lots of room for silence in the grave. Let's go back." She was impatient again. She couldn't understand why things were not going as she would have them go. They always had.

He stopped her. "No, not yet. I want to tell you something, kiddie."

Tears came into her eyes somehow when he called her that.

"Listen. If anything _is_ on the way to us,--and if you think so I expect there is,--most probably it will send me one way over the earth and you another because this way has failed. When I'm out of sight I want you to remember one thing."

"I shall remember it all," she said.

"But especially one thing. I set out to break you."

"You've done that," she said.

"No, please don't rot me,--not to-night, out here. If ever my name flicks across your memory at any time remember my idiotic attempt to give you the spurs."

"Why especially that?"

"Because you beat me,--beat me to a frazzle and that's the only good thing about this episode."