Читать книгу: «Quick Action», страница 8
XIX
He fell into step beside her, and they walked up from the little cover through the beach-grapes and out among the scrubby dunes, where in the heated silence the perfume of sweet-bay and pines mingled with the odour of the sea.
Everywhere the great sulphur-coloured butterflies were flying, making gorgeous combinations with the smaller, orange butterflies and the great, velvet-winged Palamedes swallow-tail.
Lizards frisked and raced away before them, emerald tinted, green with sky-blue tails, grey and red; the little gophers scurried into their burrows along the tangled hammock's edges. Over the palm-trees' feathery crests sailed a black vulture, its palmated wing-tips spread like inky fingers against the blue. Somewhere in the saw-grass a bittern boomed and boomed; and the seagulls' clamour rang incessantly above the thunder of the surf.
"I wonder," she murmured, "whether my sunburn makes me drowsy."
"It's the climate. You'll feel sleepy for a week before you are acclimated," he said… "Why don't you put down the puppy and let him follow?"
She did so; and the little creature frisked and leaped and padded joyously about among the bayberry bushes, already possessed with the canine determination to investigate all the alluring smells in the world, and miss none of them.
After a little while they arrived at the bungalow which Constance had chosen. The girl pushed open the unlocked door; the puppy pranced in like a diminutive hobby-horse, flushed a big lizard, and went into fits of excitement till the solitary cabin rang with his treble barking.
They watched him through the doorway, laughingly; then Gray looked at the claim notice stuck upright in the sand. Presently he walked to the edge of the coquina quarry and looked down into it.
Thousands of dollars' worth of the shell deposit lay already exposed. There were great strata of it; ledges, shelves, vast masses in every direction. The quarry had been worked very little, and that little had been accomplished stupidly. Either in the rough, or merely as lumps of conglomerate for crushing, the coquina in sight alone was very, very valuable. There could be no doubt of that.
Also, he understood that the strata deposited there continued at least for half a mile to the westward, where his own bungalow marked its probable termination.
He turned after a few minutes' inspection, and walked slowly back to where Constance was standing by the open door. A slight constraint, amounting almost to embarrassment, ensued for a few minutes, but the puppy dissipated it when he leaped at a butterfly, fell on his nose with a thump, and howled dismally until reassured by his anxious foster-parents, who caught him up and generously passed him to each other, petting him vigourously.
Twice Gray said good-bye to Constance Leslie and started to go on toward his own bungalow, but the puppy invariably began a frantic series of circles embracing them both, and he had to come back to keep the dog from the demoralisation of utter exhaustion.
"You know," he said, "this is going to be awkward. I believe that dog thinks we are mar – thinks we are sister and brother. Don't you?"
She replied with a slight flush on her fair face, that the dog undoubtedly cherished some such idea.
"Take him inside," said Gray firmly. "Then I'll beat it."
So she took the puppy inside and closed the door, with a smiling nod of adieu to Gray. But he had not gone very far when he heard her clear, far call; and, turning, saw her beckon frantically.
Back he came at top speed.
"Oh, dear," she exclaimed. "Oh, dear! He's tearing 'round and 'round the room moaning and whining and barking. I'm very certain he will have fits if you don't speak to him."
Gray opened the door cautiously, and the little dog came out, projected like a bolt from a catapult, fairly flinging his quivering little body into Gray's arms.
The reunion was elaborate and mutually satisfying. Constance furtively touched her brown eyes with a corner of her handkerchief.
"What on earth are we to do?" she asked, unfeignedly affected. "I would give him to you in a minute if you think he would be contented without me."
"We can try it."
So Constance started westward, across the dunes, and Gray went into the bungalow with the dog. But it required only a second or two to convince him that it wouldn't do, and he opened the door and called frantically to Constance.
"There is no use in trying that sort of thing," he admitted, when Constance hastened back to a touching reunion with the imprisoned dog. "Strategy is our only hope. I'll sit here on the threshold with you, and as soon as he goes to sleep I'll slink away."
So side by side they seated themselves on the sandy threshold of the bungalow, and the little dog, happy and contented, curled up on the floor of the room, tucked his blunt muzzle into his flank, and took a series of naps with one eye always open. He was young, but suspicion had already done its demoralising work with him, and he intended to keep at least one eye on his best beloveds.
She in her fresh and clinging gown, with the first delicate sunmask tinting her unaccustomed skin, sat silent and distrait, her idle fingers linked in her lap. And, glancing askance at her now and then, the droop of her under lip seemed to him pathetic, like that of a tired child in trouble.
When he was not looking at her he was immersed in perplexed cogitation. The ownership of the dog he had already settled in his mind; the ownership of the quarry he had supposed he had settled.
Therefore, why was he so troubled about it? Why was he so worried about her, wondering what she would do in the matter?
The only solution left seemed to lie in a recourse to the law – unless – unless —
But he couldn't – he simply couldn't, merely for a sentimental impulse, give up to a stranger what he honestly considered an inheritance. That would be carrying sentimentalism too far.
And yet – and yet! He needed the inheritance desperately. Matters financial had gone all wrong with him. How could he turn his back on offered salvation just because a youthful and pretty girl also required a financial lift in a cold-blooded and calculating world?
And yet – and yet! He would sleep over it, of course. But he honestly saw no prospect of changing his opinion concerning the ownership of the quarry.
As he sat there biting a stem of sweet-bay and listening to the cardinals piping from the forest, he looked down into the heated coquina pit.
A snake was coiled up on one of the ledges, basking.
"Miss Leslie!"
She lifted her head and straightened her drooping shoulders, looking at him from eyes made drowsy and beautiful by the tropic heat.
"I only wanted to say," he began gravely, "that it is not safe for you to go into the quarry alone – in case you had any such intention."
"Why?"
"There are snakes there. Do you see that one? Well, he's harmless, I think – a king-snake, if I am not mistaken. But it's a good place for rattlers."
"Then you should be careful, too."
"Oh, I'm careful enough, but you might not know when to be on your guard. This island is a snaky one. It's famous for its diamond-back rattlers and the size of them. Their fangs are an inch long, and it usually means death to be struck by one of them."
The girl nodded thoughtfully.
He said with a new anxiety: "As a matter of fact, you really ought not to be down here all alone."
"I know it. But it meant a race for ownership, and I had to come at a minute's notice."
"You should have brought a maid."
"My dear Mr. Gray, I have no maid."
"Oh, I forgot," he muttered – "but, somehow, you look as though you had been born to several."
"I am the daughter of a very poor professor."
He fidgetted with his sweet-bay twig, considering the aromatic leaves with a troubled and concentrated scowl.
"You know," he said, "this wretched island is celebrated for its unpleasant fauna. Scorpions and wood-ticks are numerous. The sting of the one is horribly painful, and might be dangerous; the villainous habits of the other might throw you into a fever."
"But what can I do?" she inquired calmly.
"There are other kinds of snakes, too," he went on with increasing solicitude for this girl for whom, suddenly, he began to consider himself responsible. "There's a vicious snake called a moccasin; and he won't get out of your way or warn you. And there's a wicked little serpent with rings of black, scarlet, and yellow around his body. He pretends to be harmless, but if he gets your finger into his mouth he'll chew it full of a venom which is precisely the same sort of venom as that of the deadly East Indian cobra."
"But – what can I do?" she repeated pitifully. "If I go to St. Augustine and leave you here in possession, it might invalidate my claim."
He was silent, knowing no more about the law than did she, and afraid to deny her tentative assertion.
"If it lay with me," he said, "I'd call a truce until you could go to St. Augustine and return again with the proper people to look out for you."
"Even if you were kind enough to do that, I could not afford even a servant under present – and unexpected – conditions."
"Why?"
"Because it has suddenly developed that I shall be obliged to engage a lawyer. And I had not expected that."
He reddened to his hair but said nothing. After a while the girl looked over her shoulder. The puppy slept, this time with both eyes closed.
When she turned again to Gray, he nodded his comprehension and rose to his feet cautiously.
"I'm going to take a walk on the beach and think this thing all out," he whispered, taking the slim, half-offered hand in adieu. "Don't go out in the scrub after sun-down. Rattlers move then. Don't go near any swamp; moccasins are the colour of sun-baked mud, and you can't see them. Don't touch any pretty little snake marked scarlet, black, and yellow – "
"How absurd!" she whispered. "As though I were likely to fondle snakes!"
"I'm terribly worried about you," he insisted, retaining her hand.
"Please don't be."
"How can I help it – what with these bungalows full of scorpions and – "
"Yours is, too," she said anxiously. "You will be very careful, won't you?"
"Yes, of course… I'm – I'm uncertain about you. That's what is troubling me – "
"Please don't bother about me. I've had to look out for myself for years."
"Have you?" he said, almost tenderly. Then he drew a quick, determined breath.
"You'll be careful, won't you?"
"Yes."
"Are you armed?"
"I have a shot-gun inside."
"That's all right. Don't open your door to any stranger… You know I simply hate to leave you alone this way – "
"But I have the dog," she reminded him, with a pretty flush of gratitude.
He had retained her hand longer than the easiest convention required or permitted. So he released it, hesitated, then with a visible effort he turned on his heel and strode away westward across the scrub.
The sun hung low behind the tall, parti-coloured shaft of the Light House, towering smooth and round high above the forest.
He looked up at Ibis Light, at the circling buzzards above it, then walked on, scarcely knowing where he was going, until he walked into the door of his own bungalow, and several large spiders scattered into flight across the floor.
"There's no use," he said aloud to an audience of lizards clinging to the silvery bark of the log-room. "I can't take that quarry. I can't do it – whether it belongs to me or not. How can a big, strong, lumbering young man do a thing like that? No. No. No!"
He picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper:
"Oh, Lord! I really do need the money, but I can't do it."
And he wrote:
Dear Miss Leslie:
You arrived on the scene before I did. I am now convinced of this. I shall not dispute the ownership of the quarry. It is yours. This statement over my signature is your guarantee that I shall never interfere with your title to the coquina quarry on Ibis Island.
So now I've got to return to New York and go to work. I'm going across to Augustine in a few moments; and while I'm there I'll engage a white woman as companion for you, and a white servant, and have them drive over at once so they will reach your bungalow before evening. With undisputed title to the quarry, you can easily afford their wages.
Good-bye. I wish you every happiness and success. Please give my love to the dog.
Yours very truly,Johnson Gray.
"It's the only way out of it," he muttered. "I'll leave it with her and bolt before she reads it. There is nothing else to do, absolutely nothing."
As he came out of his cabin, the sun hung low and red above the palm forest, and a few bats were already flying like tiny black devils above the scrub.
There was a strip of beach near his cabin, and he went down to it and began to tramp up and down with a vague idea of composing himself so that he might accomplish what he had to do gracefully, gaily, and with no suspicion of striking an attitude for gods and men to admire his moral resignation and his heroic renunciation.
No; he'd do the thing lightly, smilingly, determined that she should not think that it was a sacrifice. No; she must believe that a sense of fairness alone moved him to an honest recognition of her claims. He must make it plain to her that he really believed she had arrived at the quarry before he had.
And so he meant to leave her the letter, say good-bye, and go.
When this was all settled in his mind he looked at the ocean very soberly, then turned his back on the Atlantic and walked back to his cabin to gather up his effects.
As he approached the closed door a desolate howl from the interior greeted him: he sprang to the door and flung it open; and the puppy rushed into his arms.
Then, pinned to the scorpion-infested wall, he saw a sheet of writing, and he read:
Dear Mr. Gray:
He woke up and howled for you. It was too tragic for me. I love him but I give him to you. I give the quarry to you, also. Under the circumstances it would be impossible for me to enjoy it, even if the law awarded it to me. Nobody could ever really know which one of us first arrived and staked the claim. No doubt you did.
I am sorry I came into your life and made trouble for you and for the puppy.
So I leave you in peaceful possession. It really is a happiness for me to do it.
I am going North at once. Good-bye; and please give my love to the dog. Poor little darling, he thought we both stood in loco parentis. But he'll get over his grief for me.
Yours truly,Constance Leslie.
The puppy at his feet was howling uncomforted for the best beloved who was so strangely missing from the delightful combination which he had so joyously accepted in loco parentis.
XX
Gray gathered the dog into his arms and strode swiftly out into the sunshot, purple light of early evening.
"What a girl!" he muttered to himself. "What a girl! What a corking specimen of her sex!"
Presently he came in sight of her, and the puppy scrambled violently until set down. Then he bolted for Constance Leslie, and it was only when the little thing leaped frantically upon her that she turned with a soft, breathless little cry. And saw Gray coming toward her out of the rose and golden sunset.
Neither spoke as he came up and looked into her brown eyes and saw the traces of tears there still. The puppy leaped deliriously about them. And for a long while her slim hands lay limply in his. He looked at the ocean; she at the darkening forest.
And after a little while he drew the note from his pocket.
"I had written this when I found yours," he said. And he held it for her while she read it, bending nearer in the dim, rosy light.
After she read it she took it from him gently, folded it, and slipped it into the bosom of her gown.
Neither said anything. One of her hands still remained in his, listlessly at first – then the fingers crisped as his other arm encircled her.
They were both gazing vaguely at the ocean now. Presently they moved slowly toward it through the fragrant dusk. Her hair, loosened a little, brushed his sunburned cheek.
And around them gambolled the wise little dog, no longer apprehensive, but unutterably content with what the God of all good little doggies had so mercifully sent to him in loco parentis.
"That," said the novelist, "is another slice of fact which would never do for fiction. Besides I once read a story somewhere or other about a dog bringing two people together."
"The theme," I observed, "is thousands of years old."
"That's the trouble with all truth," nodded Duane. "It's old as Time itself, and needs a new suit of clothes every time it is exhibited to instruct people."
"What with new manners, new fashions, new dances, and the moral levelling itself gradually to the level of the unmoral," said Stafford, "nobody on the street would turn around to look at the naked truth in these days."
"Truth must be fashionably gowned to attract," I admitted.
"We of the eccentric nobility understand that," said the little Countess Athalie, glancing out of the window; and to me she added: "Lean over and see whether they have stationed a policeman in front of the Princess Zimbamzim's residence."
I went out on the balcony and glanced down the block. "Yes," I said.
"Poor old Princess," murmured the girl. "She detests moving."
"All frauds do," remarked Duane.
"She isn't a fraud," said Athalie quietly.
Our silence indicated our surprise. After a few moments the girl added:
"Whatever else she may be she is not a fraud in her profession. I think I had better give you an example of her professional probity. It interested me considerably as I followed it in my crystal. She knew all the while that I was watching her as well as the very people she herself was watching; and once or twice she looked up at me out of my crystal and grinned."
"Can she see us now?" I inquired uneasily.
"No."
"Why not?" asked Duane.
"I shall not tell you why."
"Not that I care whether she sees me or not," he added.
"Do you care, Harry, whether I see you occasionally in my crystal?" smiled Athalie.
Duane flushed brightly and reminded her that she was too honourable to follow the movements of her personal friends unless requested to do so by them.
"That is quite true," rejoined the girl, simply. "But once I saw you when I did not mean to."
"Well?" he demanded, redder still.
"You were merely asleep in your own bed," she said, laughing and accepting a lighted match from me. Then as the fragrant thread of smoke twisted in ghostly ringlets across her smooth young cheeks she settled back among her cushions.
XXI
"This," she said, "will acquaint you in a measure with the trustworthiness of the Princess Zimbamzim. And, if the policeman in front of her house could hear what I am going to tell you, he'd never remain there while his legs had power to run away with him."
They met by accident on Madison Square, and shook hands for the first time in many years. High in the Metropolitan Tower the chimes celebrated the occasion by sounding the half hour.
"It seems incredible," exclaimed George Z. Green, "that you could have become so famous! You never displayed any remarkable ability in school."
"I never displayed any ability at all. But you did," said Williams admiringly. "How beautifully you used to write your name on the blackboard! How neat and scholarly you were in everything."
"I know it," said Green gloomily. "And you flunked in almost everything."
"In everything," admitted Williams, deeply mortified.
"And yet," said Green, "here we are at thirty odd; and I'm merely a broker, and —look what you are! Why, I can't go anywhere but I find one of your novels staring me in the face. I've been in Borneo: they're there! They're in Australia and China and Patagonia. Why the devil do you suppose people buy the stories you write?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Williams modestly.
"I don't know either, though I read them myself sometimes – I don't know why. They're all very well in their way – if you care for that sort of book – but the things you tell about, Williams, never could have happened. I'm not knocking you; I'm a realist, that's all. And when I read a short story by you in which a young man sees a pretty girl, and begins to talk to her without being introduced to her, and then marries her before luncheon – and finds he's married a Balkan Princess – good-night! I just wonder why people stand for your books; that's all."
"So do I," said Williams, much embarrassed. "I wouldn't stand for them myself."
"Why," continued Green warmly, "I read a story of yours in some magazine the other day, in which a young man sees a pretty girl for the first time in his life and is married to her inside of three quarters of an hour! And I ask you, Williams, how you would feel after spending fifteen cents on such a story?"
"I'm terribly sorry, old man," murmured Williams. "Here's your fifteen – if you like – "
"Dammit," said Green indignantly, "it isn't that they're not readable stories! I had fifteen cents' worth all right. But it makes a man sore to see what happens to the young men in your stories – and all the queens they collect – and then to go about town and never see anything of that sort!"
"There are millions of pretty girls in town," ventured Williams. "I don't think I exaggerate in that respect."
"But they'd call an officer if young men in real life behaved as they do in your stories. As a matter of fact and record, there's no more romance in New York than there is in the annual meeting of the British Academy of Ancient Assyrian Inscriptions. And you know it, Williams!"
"I think it depends on the individual man," said Williams timidly.
"How?"
"If there's any romance in a man himself, he's apt to find the world rather full of it."
"Do you mean to say there isn't any romance in me?" demanded George Z. Green hotly.
"I don't know, George. Is there?"
"Plenty. Pl-en-ty! I'm always looking for romance. I look for it when I go down town to business; I look for it when I go home. Do I find it? No! Nothing ever happens to me. Nothing beautiful and wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice ever tries to pick me up. Explain that!"
Williams, much abashed, ventured no explanation.
"And to think," continued Green, "that you, my old school friend, should become a celebrity merely by writing such stories! Why, you're as celebrated as any brand of breakfast food!"
"You don't have to read my books, you know," protested Williams mildly.
"I don't have to – I know it. But I do. Everybody does. And nobody knows why. So, meeting you again after all these unromantic years, I thought I'd just ask you whether by any chance you happen to know of any particular section of the city where a plain, everyday broker might make a hit with the sort of girl you write about. Do you?"
"Any section of this city is romantic enough – if you only approach it in the proper spirit," asserted Williams.
"You mean if my attitude toward romance is correct I'm likely to encounter it almost anywhere?"
"That is my theory," admitted Williams bashfully.
"Oh! Well, what is the proper attitude? Take me, for example. I've just been to the bank. I carry, at this moment, rather a large sum of money in my inside overcoat pocket. My purpose in drawing it was to blow it. Now, tell me how to blow it romantically."
"How can I tell you such a thing, George – "
"It's your business. You tell people such things in books. Now, tell me, face to face, man to man, how to get thoroughly mixed up in the sort of romance you write – the kind of romance that has made William McWilliam Williams famous!"
"I'm sorry – "
"What! You won't! You admit that what you write is bunk? You confess that you don't know where there are any stray queens with whom I might become happily entangled within the next fifteen minutes?"
"I admit no such thing," said Williams with dignity. "If your attitude is correct, in ten minutes you can be up against anything on earth!"
"Where?"
"Anywhere!"
"Very well! Here we are on Madison Square. There's Admiral Farragut; there's the Marble Tower. Do you mean that if I walk from this spot for ten minutes – no matter in what direction – I'll walk straight into Romance up to my neck?"
"If your attitude is correct, yes. But you've got to know the elements of Romance when you see them."
"What are the elements of Romance? What do they resemble?" demanded George Z. Green.
Williams said, in a low, impressive voice:
"Anything that seems to you unusual is very likely to be an element in a possible romance. If you see anything extraordinary during the next ten minutes, follow it up. And ninety-nine chances in a hundred it will lead you into complications. Interfering with other people's business usually does," he added pleasantly.
"But," said Green, "suppose during the next ten minutes, or twenty minutes, or the next twenty-four hours I don't see anything unusual."
"It will be your own fault if you don't. The Unusual is occurring all about us, every second. A trained eye can always see it."
"But suppose the Unusual doesn't occur for the next ten minutes," insisted Green, exasperated. "Suppose the Unusual is taking a vacation? It would be just my luck."
"Then," said Williams, "you will have to imagine that everything you see is unusual. Or else," he added blandly, "you yourself will have to start something. That is where the creative mind comes in. When there's nothing doing it starts something."
"Does it ever get arrested?" inquired Green ironically. "The creative mind! Sure! That's where all this bally romance is! – in the creative mind. I knew it. Good-bye."
They shook hands; Williams went down town.
