Chapter IV

Mr. Hugo Canning, of the well-known Pursuing-Sex; how the
Great Young Man pursued Miss Heth to a Summer-house, and what
stopped his Thundering Feet.

Nor were the figments of sweet sleep too fanciful or far-flown. About eight-thirty o'clock, when Mrs. and Miss Heth stepped from a descending lift into the glaring publicity of the main floor, the first object that their eyes fell upon was Mr. Hugo Canning in the flesh. The second was Cousin Willie Kerr, even more in the flesh, trotting loyally at his side. At this precise instant, in short, the celebrated transient quitted the dining-room for the relaxations of his evening.

The coincidence of the moment was pure: one hundred per cent, as they say commercially. One takes it to mean that Destiny, having handled a favorite child somewhat roughly for a time, now turned back its smiling mother-face. The ladies Heth, having dined refinedly in their sitting-room, descended in search of cooling breezes, or for any other reason why. Over the spaces of the great court, half lobby, half parlor, Miss Heth had seen the masculine apparitions an instant before they saw her: or just in time, that is to say, to be showing them now her flawless profile....

It is easily surmised that Miss Heth's manner in action was contained, her habit the very reverse of forward. One seeing her now would be cheaply cynical, indeed, to say or dream that, with reference to some such conjuncture as the present, this girl had left a happy home many hours before. Her presence shamed every unworthy surmise. With a lovely unconsciousness she was spied walking her innocent ways toward the piazza with mamma, even now girlishly unaware that an opposite and uproarious sex was in headlong pursuit....

If this pursuit--to be doggedly literal--appeared to lag for a moment, if it did not seem to start with that instant _élan_ which one had a right to expect, be sure that there was a complication of sound reasons for that. Kerr, in the circumstances, was the appointed leader of the chase; and Kerr hesitated. Canning's desire to avoid the local society and be left free to outdoor exercise and sleep was, in truth, only too well known to him. And to-night, worse luck, the distinguished visitor appeared even less socially inclined than usual: annoyed when the select little party he had expected from northerly haunts had been found represented at the Beach by a telegram instead; increasingly bored by the desolate air of the all but empty hostelry. "When's the next train out of this hell-hole?"--such was Mr. Canning's last recorded remark up to this not uninteresting moment.

Kerr, when he saw Mrs. and Miss Heth over the distance, merely made a genial exclamation, and then gazed. He was nearing forty, was Willie, short and slightly bald, with an increasing appreciation of the world's good things and as much good nature as his round figure called for. Canning's acquaintance he had by the chance of a lifelong friendship with Mrs. Allison Payne. By reason of a native clannishness and certain small obligations of a more material nature, he was more than ready to share his privileges with his brilliant cousins. But....

"So that's the drowned lady," said Canning's voice, rather moodily, at his elbow.... "Well, then, I know her."

"Dandy girl, Carlisle," exclaimed Willie, instantly. "Great little piece of work...."

One hundred feet away, opportunity unconsciously receded toward the piazza. Willie, having hesitated through no unfaithfulness, plunged with no want of tact.

"Got to speak to 'em a minute--make inquiries--cousins, y' know. D' ye mind?"

"My dear chap, why should I?"

"Awright--just stop and say howdedo," said the plump diplomatist. "Won't take a minute...."

And Canning, perceiving then that Kerr expected to make this stop in his company, said with an assurance not unbecoming to his lordly bearing: "If you please. And don't start anything, for pity's sake. I'm for bed in fifteen minutes."

So it all fell out, according to the book. So it was that the pursuing feet were free to thunder. So Mrs. Heth heard the voice of the leal one, subdued from a distance: "_Howdedo, Cousin Isabel! How're you an' Carlisle this evening_?..."

And so the maid turned, startled from her other-worldly dreams....

He was the greatest parti that had ever crossed her path, that was ever likely to cross her path. But Miss Heth faced him with no want of confidence; received his greeting with a charming bright negligence. One saw readily that such a matter as "making an impression" was far indeed from this maid's mind. If doubts, a vague uneasiness relative to the afternoon, still fretted the hinterlands of her mind (and they did), she was much too well trained, too resolute withal, to let them appear troublously upon the surface. Moreover, the nap of forty minutes, not winks, had been like the turning of a new leaf; and she was fortified, woman-wise, with the knowledge that she looked her best. Over her shoulders there clung a shimmering scarf, a pretty trifle all made of the scales of a silver mermaid. It was observed, however, that the gray crêpe-de-chine quite justified its choice....

The meeting of four had been effected in one end of the wide garish space: among the loungers of the lobby, all eyes were turned in that direction. There were salutations; the introduction of Mr. Canning to Mrs. Heth; inquiries after Miss Heth's health. Quite easily the square party resolved itself into two conversational halves. Mrs. Heth, it was clear from the outset, preferred Willie Kerr's talk above any other obtainable at that time and place. She was, and remained, absolutely fascinated by it....

"It seems quite unnecessary," Mr. Canning was saying--but he pronounced it "unne's'ry"--"to ask if you are any the worse for the ducking...."

"Oh, no--I'm quite well, thank you. We've suffered nothing worse than the spoiling of all our plans in coming here!"

The man's look politely interrogated her. "Oh, really? I'm sorry."

"We came, you see, to be very quiet. And we were never so frightfully noisy in our lives."

He smiled; made his small distinguished bow.

"You've reason to feel annoyed on all scores then. At any rate, it's charming to find you as our fellow guest."

And his eyes flitted from her toward Kerr, and then turned briefly upon mamma, and her strange little downy mustache.

Carlisle now perceived the disinterestedness, if not the faint weariness, in Mr. Canning's manner; she saw that he had forgotten the five minutes at the Country Club. The strong probability was, moreover, that he thought the worse of her for allowing herself to be nearly drowned in so vulgarly public a way. However, she was untroubled; she thought him, for her part, adorable to look at and of a splendid manner and conceit; and aloud she inquired, with her air of shining indifference, if Mr. Canning was not delighted with the Beach in October.

"Well, you know, I think I've been here before"--he said _bean_, most deliciously--"only I can't be quite sure. It seems to me a most agreeable place. Only, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, what does one do in the evening?"

"Usually, I believe, one goes to bed directly after dinner. If one does this, and dines extremely late, the evening slips by quite nicely, we find."

"But the afternoons? Wouldn't they perhaps loom a thought long at times, waiting on for dinner?"

"There's napping provided for the afternoon, you see. And many other diversions, such as reading, walking, and thinking."

"Perhaps one should arrange to spend only afternoons at the Beach. You make them sound simply uproarious."

"We're a simple people here, Mr. Canning, with simple joys and sorrows, easily amused."

Mr. Canning looked down at her. However, Carlisle did not meet his gaze. Having already, in a quiet way, given him two looks where they would do the most good, she was now glancing maidenly at mamma, who conversed vice-presidentially of her Associated Charities policies.

"They must be brought to help themselves!" Mrs. Heth was saying. "Wholesale, thoughtless generosity is demoralizing to poverty. It is sheer ruination to their moral fibre."

"Promiscuous charity!--ruination! Just what I always say," chirped Willie. "Look at ancient Rome, ma'am. Began giving away corn to the poor, and, by gad!--she fell!"...

"Delightful! I see I shall like it here," Mr. Canning was observing--and was there perceptible the slightest thawing in his somewhat formidable manner?... "I too," said he, "have dwelt in Arcady."

The girl looked over the spaces, a little smile in her eyes.

"Ah, then you didn't need to be told that the sandman comes early there."

"But not, I think, when the moon shines bright--and the simple amusements you speak of seem to be waiting? Surely games in the evening are not altogether forbidden, or does my memory of the place deceive me?"

"You seem to remember it perfectly. But I thought your complaint was that there was nothing at all amusing to do in Arcady."

"Ah," said Mr. Canning, "but I'm having my second thoughts now."

She had given him a third, uptilting look with her speech; and now it was as if the great eligible had seen her for the first time. If the gaze of his handsome eyes became somewhat frank, this girl had been fashioned to stand all scrutiny victoriously. A mode which defined the figure with some truthfulness held no terrors for her; rather the contrary. Her skin was fine and fair as a lily, with an undertone of warmth, dawn pink on the cheek; the whiteness of her neck showed an engaging tracery of blue. Her mass of hair, of an ashy dull gold, would have been too showy above a plain face; but the case was otherwise with her. Her mouth, which was not quite flawless but something better, in especial allured the gaze; so did her eyes, of a dusky blue, oddly shaped, and fringed with the gayest lashes ...

"Besides," added the man, looking down at her with a certain lightening in his gaze, "as I remember, I did not say that there was nothing amusing to do. I merely, as a stranger, came to you begging some guidance on the point."

"I see. But I very much doubt my ability to guide you in that way, Mr. Canning--"

"I can only observe that you've thrown out a number of perfectly ripping suggestions already--walking on the piazza, for example. Mightn't we steal that diversion from afternoon temporarily, don't you think? Perhaps Mrs. Heth would agree to pursue the missing breeze so far?"

"That would be nice," said Carlisle.

You could distinctly hear his thundering feet now....

Strolling for four was agreed upon, and that simple afternoon amusement started. But, arriving at the piazza, the dowager discovered that, after all, the night air was just a little cool for her, and turned back, not without some beaming. She mentioned the Blue Parlor as her port of call, where smoking was forbidden. Willie, doing his duty as he saw it, dropped his cigar into a brass repository. He had faults like the rest of us, had Willie, but his deathless loyalty deserved a monument in a park.

Carlisle and Mr. Canning strolled on alone. She walked outwardly serene as the high-riding moon, but inwardly with a quickening sense of triumph, hardly clouded at all now. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had fallen out....

Many eyes had followed this shining pair as they quitted the common gathering-place. She, as we have seen, was inviting as a spectacle. He, to the nobodies, was simply one of the sights of the place, like the Fort. And his distinguished House was still a small one, at that, not yet arrived where another generation would unfailingly put it. If the grandfather of Hugo Canning had founded the family, financially speaking, it was his renowned father who had raised it so fast and far, doubling and redoubling the Canning fortune with a velocity by no means unprecedented in the eighties and nineties. To-day there were not many names better known in the world of affairs, in the rarer social altitudes, even in the shore-hotels of the provinces....

And the son and heir of the name and fortune, who now trod the Beach piazza with Miss Carlisle Heth, was obviously more than many sons of wealth, much more than a mere trousered incident to millions. This one saw in the first glance at his Olympian bearing; but Carlisle Heth knew more than that. Upon this young man the enterprising vehicles of modern history had, long since, conferred an individual celebrity. Often had the Sunday editors told their "public" of his exploits in the sporting and social realms, as they called them; not rarely had journals of a more gossipy character paragraphed him smartly, using their asterisks to remove all doubt as to who was meant. Before such an evening as this had ever crossed her maiden's dreams, Carlisle Heth had read of Hugo Canning....

It was a bad throat, a God-given touch of bronchitis or whatnot, that had sent the great young man south. This was known through Willie Kerr, and other private sources. Also, that he would remain with his Payne cousins through the following week; and in December might possibly return from the Carolinas or Florida for a few days' riding with the Hunt Club. Meantime he was here: and it was but Saturday, mid-evening, and a whole beautiful Sunday lay ahead....

From the piazza, after a turn or two, Miss Heth and Mr. Canning sauntered on to a little summer-house, which stood on the hotel front-lawn, not far from the piazza end. She had hesitated when he commended the pretty bower; but it was really the discreetest spot imaginable, under the public eye in all directions, and undoubtedly commanding a perfect view of the moonlight on the water, precisely as he pointed out.

In this retreat, "What a heavenly night!" exclaimed Miss Heth.

Canning, still standing, looked abroad upon a scene of dim beauty, gentle airs, and faint bright light. "Now that you say it," he replied, "it is. But depend on it, I should never have admitted it quarter of an hour ago."

"Oh! But isn't it rather tedious to deny what's so beautifully plain?"

"Should you say that tedious is the word? A better man than I denied his Lord."

"Yes," said Carlisle, not absolutely dead-sure of the allusion, "but he was frightened, wasn't he, or something?"

"And I was lonely. Loneliness beats fear hollow for making the world look out of whack."

"Doesn't it? And is there a lonesomer place on the globe than a summer resort out of season?"

"But we were speaking of fifteen minutes ago, were we not?" said Canning, and sat down beside her on the rustic bench.

The walls of this little summer-house were largely myth, and lattice for the rest. Through the interstices the dim brightness of the moon misted in, and the multitudinous rays from the hotel. There reached them the murmur of voices, the languorous lap of water. A serene and reassuring scene it surely was; there was no menace in the night's silvern calmness, no shadow of stalking trouble....

Carlisle imagined Mr. Canning to be capable of a rapid advance at his desire, and was opposed on principle to such a course of events. Still, she was saying, a moment or two later:

"And in the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road--I suppose you never feel lonely there?"

"Why fort, if one might know?"

"I've been told that you were awfully well barricaded there, prepared to stand any sort of siege."

Canning seemed quite amused. He declared, on the contrary, that neglect and unpopularity were his portion in a strange land.

"I'm an invalid on sick-leave," said he, "and my orders are to go to bed. Please don't smile, for it's all quite true ..."

He appeared to develop a certain interest in the moonlit talk. He proceeded in a voice and manner no longer purely civil:

"And, to bare my soul to you, I'm no fonder of being lonely than another man.... Do you know that, but for Kerr, you're my one acquaintance in all this part of the world? What shall we say of that? I sit at dinner, consumed by blue devils. I emerge, and behold, you walk across the lobby. Haven't I some right to feel that the gods are with me even at the Beach?"

Perchance she might have given him some information there, but instead she laughed musically.

"The god of the pretty speeches, at any rate! Must I tell you that you didn't look quite overjoyed when dear Willie came dragging you up?"

"I've no doubt I looked all sorts of ways, for I'd never felt more unfit for any society, including my own. The more is my debt to you for chasing my devils away.... But perhaps I owe you no thanks after all, as one guesses that you do these little services for others without any particular effort."

Carlisle glanced at him, smiling a little from her dusky eyes.

"Your experience is that most people find it a great effort to speak pleasantly to you, I suppose?"

"Again I point out to you that our talk is not of most people, but of you."

"Oh! And is there something particularly original about me? This grows exciting."

"I, for one, think that beauty is always original," said Canning, with sufficient impersonality, but no more.... "Still, we know, of course, that unaided it cannot drive the blues of others very far."

"After the sugar-coating comes the pill. Tell me in what way I have been deficient."

"Ah, that's yet to learn. To be charming by habit is an agreeable thing; but you haven't convinced me yet, you know, that you know how to be kind."

Her lashes fell before his masculine gaze; she did not answer. About them was the sweet hush of the night. She was aware that he had moved nearer upon their bench; aware, too, of a faster beating of her heart. And then, quite suddenly, a new voice spoke, so close that both started sharply; a rather shy voice, yet one possessed of a certain vivid quality of life.

"I beg your pardon--but _is_ this Miss Heth?"

They turned as upon one string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares passed between the dim trio.

"I am Miss Heth."

"Could you possibly let me speak to you--for a moment, Miss Heth? I realize, of course, that it's a great intrusion but--"

Canning started up, annoyed. Carlisle, without knowing why, was instantly conscious of a subtle sinking of the heart: some deep instinct rang a warning in the recesses of her being, as if crying out: "This man means trouble." She glanced at Mr. Canning with a kind of little shrug, suggesting doubt, and some helplessness; and he, taking this for sufficient authority, assumed forthwith the male's protectorship.

"Yes? What is it that you wish?"

The tall stranger was observed to bow slightly.

"As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few moments--privately. Of course I shouldn't venture to trespass so, if the matter weren't vitally important--"

"Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about? Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!"

The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was indefinably suggestive of a conflict.

"I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie--the boy who got into all the trouble ... Ah...."

The involuntary ejaculation, briefly arresting his speech, was his perfect tribute to the girl's beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart.

"This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarrassed rush. "I--I appreciate, I needn't say, that it seems a great liberty, to--"

"Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady's battle with lordly assurance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...."

But the stranger's vivid voice bore him down: "_Do you, Miss Heth?_... The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but--I--I'm afraid he may take matters into his own hands--"

Canning took an impatient step forward.

"Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady, sneaking for favors now. Let's--"

"Mr. Canning, I--I'm afraid I _ought_ to speak to him!"

"_What?_" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.

"_Oh!... That's kind of you!_"

Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the person of the sudden stranger--and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied mistakenly upon Dalhousie's gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he then said: "Well, then, I'll just have to speak before your friend."... What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of her anyway?

Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector's gaze with a look of appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice:

"I'm so dreadfully sorry. But I don't quite see how I could refuse just to--to hear what he has to say. Under the circumstances, would it--wouldn't it be simply unkind?"

Canning said, with small lightening of his restrained displeasure: "Ah! I'm to understand, then, that you wish to give this--gentleman an audience alone?"

It was, of course, the last thing on earth she desired, but God clearly was out of his heaven to-day, and Mr. Canning would like her better in the long run if he stepped aside for a space now. She said, with a restraint which did her credit:

"_Could_ you forgive me--for five minutes? You must know how I--dislike this. But _oughtn't_ I--"

The great parti gave an ironic little laugh.

"As you please, of course. I shall await your pleasure on the piazza."

And he stamped out and away into the moonlight, passing the silent intruder with a look which said loudly that he would have kicked him if it had promised to be worth the trouble.

The silver cord was loosed. The village-clock, quarter of a mile away, struck nine, and all's well. Hugo Canning's stately back receded. Coincidently the shabby-looking stranger who had displaced him stepped forward into the summer-house. The first thing Carlisle noticed about him was that he was lame.