8
"The Queen of Tahulamaji," admitted Miss Whitcom, "was really a most amazing creature."
"I should think it likely."
They were sitting together on the rustic bench. At first he had been on the rustic bench alone. She had flung herself in the hammock. But the interest of their talk had brought her first to a sitting posture, then to a standing posture, and finally to a rustic bench posture.
"Ah, but you mustn't think just because she was amazing that she wasn't also perfectly human—sometimes almost desperately so, O'Donnell!"
"Yes, I suppose so. I can somehow picture her—especially the desperate times."
"Well, of course she did have her eccentricities. For instance, her temper. To the last it remained most alarmingly and deliciously undependable."
"To the last?"
"Ah, yes—poor Tessie!"
"Tessie?"
"I always called her that. It wasn't strictly Tahulamajian, but she adored the name."
"So the Queen is dead?"
"Yes, Queen Tess died early in the spring. She was terribly old, but game right up to the last minute. You never saw such gameness. The funeral was immensely impressive."
"Whole populace turned out, of course?"
"Rather. Ostracism threatened against any who stayed away without a valid excuse! And they carried her along, all dressed up in her robes of state, and even with a crown on. Poor, dear Tessie! How often she used to say to me in private, when the mats were all snug over the doors: 'You know there are times,' she'd say, 'when I have my doubts about all this sovereign divinity business. It's down in the state books that I'm one of the direct line, descended from Mentise-huhu and the gods of the Sea Foam. But there are times when I have my doubts,' she used to say. 'There are times when I seem to be just Tessie, and between you and me, I'm coming to suspect that there never were any gods of the Sea Foam at all!'"
O'Donnell smiled at her look of momentary abstraction. What a life Marjory's had been—what a life! Here he found her, at last, in the heart of a religious colony. But at one time she had sold bonds in Wall Street; she had been an agent for a Pacific steamship line; she had been a political organizer in the North-west; and she had once served as associate editor of a newspaper. Yes, she had always struck O'Donnell—himself so simple and homely of nature—as most violently revolutionary. He remembered how, in the early days, she used to march in suffrage parades. She had taken up Socialism and dropped it; had smoked; and he distinctly recalled her having used, in her time, quite sporty language. Once she had had something to do with the races, and had worn a derby. And yet....
"Well," he mused, "after all it's the same Marjory."
"You think so?" She was amused.
"Yes, the same old Marjory. I wonder if there ever was a time when you weren't 'advanced.'"
"You call me advanced? My dear fellow, I must refer you—"
"I know, I know," he protested. "You forget I've come to know them all. Perhaps," he added slyly, "I'm growing just a little advanced myself!"
"You?"
"Can you imagine?"
"Oh, well—"
"In my old age—fancy that!"
"True, I'd forgotten the poet."
"Well," he admitted, "one lives and learns."
"We all do that, you know."
"Oh, yes."
"Well, but do you mean we've nothing left to quarrel about? Has it really come to such a pass?"
"I do." He spoke almost solemnly. It was a little like the "I do" of the marriage rite.
"Barrett! Good heavens! What's the world coming to?"
"I don't know," he replied naïvely. "I only know there are no grounds left. I've capitulated, you see, at every point."
"Tut, tut!"
"Every point!" he insisted. No compromise would do. It might amaze her, might snatch the ground from under her feet; he would admit, at last, no compromise.
She grew whimsical, then a new earnestness creeping into her voice: "You know," she said, "I've come to suspect some of this talk of being 'advanced.' I mean"—for she felt his enquiring gaze—"I've come at length to suspect that in just going ahead.... Barrett, for heaven's sake help me out!" For once in her life—and it was surely a portentous symptom—Miss Whitcom was groping.
"Well," she went on at last, still speaking earnestly, if fumblingly, "I'm not sure I can express at all what I feel. It's what I've been coming to feel more and more—no doubt a gradual development up out of the cocksure attitude of one's—Barrett, I've begun using a dreadful and ruthless word—one's immaturity ...!" She tossed her head. "It doesn't mean I don't still believe in all the fine, big movements. You know"—her voice for a moment grew almost tender—"I always looked upon myself as one of the first of the 'new' women. I wasn't going at things blindly. I was always following an ideal, Barrett, even when the things I did seemed most wild and inexplicable. But as I look back I seem to have been following strange roads in an effort to reach it! How strange! And now—yes, only fancy, as you say: in one's old age!—I'm afraid I see in a way that 'progress' can be overdone. That is, I've come to see that progress is something you can't force. Yet there have to be pioneers in the world, don't there, Barrett? People who are reckless, and pay the price, and aren't afraid of going too far.... Yes, I realize that, as I've always realized it. But oh, Barrett, Barrett—I'm afraid I'm getting to be very, very selfish. I've been a pioneer so long, and after all I don't quite want to be a pioneer to the very end of my days. I—I somehow feel I want to stop being one before—oh, Barrett, before it's quite too late ...!"
"I think," said O'Donnell slowly, his voice just a little shaken, "if the time has come for plain speaking like this, you'd better let me hold your hand. Do you mind?"
"Listen to him!" she said, in one of her richest tones of banter.
All the same, she let him have it.
While these important events were proceeding, Louise, who had not gone to find Mr. Barry, after all, but who had returned to her room instead, slept a little. She was unused to such early rising, and she had been through a great deal since dawn.
She slept, and had a dream. She dreamed that she and Leslie were to be married. She seemed to be very much excited, and to be surrounded by a crowd of indefinite persons, some of them friends she now possessed, and some of them friends she had known in her early girlhood. And all the while she was happily arguing: "I know I'm a little bit older, but we love each other so much that just a mere couple of years don't count."
Waking with a start to problems more sinister than merely that involving a conventional disagreement of ages, Louise perceived that it had drawn to the golden midst of afternoon. Lynndal was waiting for her. As the curious, almost hypnotic quality of the dream wore off, she responded to another flash of new purpose. The dream still haunted and oppressed her; at first it had made her sad; but as it faded into a renewed appreciation of that humiliating conversation beside the driftwood shed, a mood of rebellion came upon her.
She tossed her head haughtily: Leslie should be allowed to make no further difference to her. She would thrust him entirely out of her life. He ought never really to have entered it. No, she shouldn't have given herself to Leslie, even temporarily. It had produced an unpleasant situation, and afforded him an opportunity now to fling all her kindness back in her face. He had, indeed, treated her shamefully—not at all as he had treated her earlier in the day. At dawn.... But she murmured angrily: "This is the return one gets for trying to be nice to a man!"
The new mood inclined her, in a subtle way, toward Lynndal—as abruptly as it had hardened her heart against Leslie. The emotion of the moment illuminated the former in an almost rosy manner. She began thinking of Lynndal warmly and romantically—as she had thought of him during those long months when they were far apart. Her attitude again became the attitude she had maintained throughout the period of their increasingly affectionate correspondence. And the sense of his nearness seemed no longer to distract or terrify her. Excitement stirred in her breast. It leapt to her eyes and trembled upon her lips. She had never loved Lynndal so almost tempestuously. Strong emotion of this sort always had a beautifying effect upon Miss Needham. Her face glowed as she encouraged the rekindling passion. She fanned the flame of her love for Lynndal, and at the same time a soft sense of steadfastness and assurance snuffed out the dismal quandary which had wracked and tortured her soul from the moment she saw him up on the deck of the steamer. Some mad whim, she argued feverishly, had filled her with a panic of indecision and dread; but that was gone now. She whipped the purging passion into new and fantastic fervour. Her laugh had a touch of wildness in it. Even Richard had never moved her like this!
Suddenly, a little chill seized her heart. What if already it were too late? What if, by her coldness and aloofness, she had already created in Lynndal's heart a havoc which could not be rescinded? Was it not wholly conceivable that she had killed his love for her? Had she not shown herself perverse, cruel, and irredeemably fickle? Perhaps now the tables would be turned, and he would draw away from her, even as she had shrunk from him. The thought had a maddening influence: she felt momentarily faint and distracted. Then a new energy of determination blazed in her eyes. It must not be too late. She must win him back, however far her wretched conduct may have driven him.
Louise dressed with elaborate care, giving heed to every eloquent detail of her toilette. She tore off the brooch Richard had given her and flung it into her jewel box with a gesture of gay scorn. No more toying and trifling! She was ready now to give herself completely and for all time—the more ready because of that uneasy little tremor of doubt lest she had killed his love. Yes, it was a wonderful moment—a moment so packed with the frenzy of giving that there remained no other thought at all in her mind. She lived for the moment alone. She made herself radiant for Lynndal, the emotion which swayed her growing more and more riotous. She surrendered herself to it. He was waiting for her. And she went down to him hopefully, wistfully, yet withal triumphantly.
"Which way?" asked Lynndal as they descended the short bluff and reached the hard, surf-packed shore.
"I don't care," she laughed up at him. "Shall we go this way?"
It didn't matter to Barry. All ways were equal to him, since he was really and truly in love and spent no great amount of attention upon the scenery. He looked at her adoringly. His quiet eyes were dazzled.
They strolled along close beside the little waves. It was rather a picture. She was charmingly gowned, and carried a small plum parasol.
"Let me take your coat, dear," he suggested.
She gave him the light silk wrap, and he carried it on his arm, crooked almost pathetically for the purpose.
"I don't wonder you like it up here," he said, looking off over the sparkling water. "If we had this in the centre of the desert...."
"I suppose it would make a difference." All at once she pictured the desert. She pictured herself living in the midst of the desert with Lynndal.
Then the dry-farming expert went on to explain, at some length, just what would happen were this sea to be transported to the parched heart of Arizona. The words began falling a little dully on her ears. She was vaguely troubled. But she could not tell just why it should be so.
There was a silence. They walked along slowly side by side. A wave of happiness stole upon the man; his hand, encountering hers, closed over it tenderly.
She caught her breath a little. "Lynndal," she cautioned, "you mustn't...."
But he clung to her hand. He had come so far! And again she seemed to hear those terrible words booming in her ears: "You are mine, all mine!"
Slowly his arm crept round her waist. There was nothing overwhelming about the action: Barry was not an overwhelming man, and had not an overwhelming way with him. His was, rather, a kind of gentle, furtive passion, which displayed itself in a very slight trembling, an occasional queer huskiness of voice.
All at once Louise grew alarmed. It seemed to her that a terrible and inevitable moment had come. She wasn't entirely prepared. She must have more time ...!
"Please take your arm away, Lynndal," she said tensely.
"But why, dear?"
"Please! The cottagers...."
"But Louise, dear, there isn't a cottage in sight." They had, indeed, proceeded by this time well around the Point. "There's no one to see, and besides...."
She glanced up shyly. His face was kind. His eyes were pleading and full of quiet reassurance. Did he suspect a little the turmoil within her? There was no reason why his arm shouldn't be about her; yet her mind went on groping. It was like being in a thick wood. Could she give herself to him entirely? Could she give herself to anyone entirely?
"Louise, I love you," he murmured, bending down so that his lips were close to her cheek.
She trembled. But she told herself that he had come to her out of the desert; that he was her lover; and that she must give herself to him without any more restraint. Why had she led him on and on if she didn't intend to give herself fully at last?
"Louise, dearest.... Louise!"
"Yes, Lynndal...."
"I love you so much!"
The old panic surged again, but she fought it back. "For ever and ever—nobody but me...." Yet there were so many others.... Chaos again enveloped the girl.
"Won't you kiss me?"
His arms were adoringly about her. His lips came close to hers. It was time, now, to give herself. She raised her lips.
They kissed.
But a great cry was in her heart: "I can't!" It was almost as though he had heard it, for he let her slip way; and she stood there before him, her head lowered, her hands desperately covering her face.
Louise thought blindly of Richard—what their first kiss had been like ...! And then she remembered how, afterward, she had longed for death. With what completeness the situation now was reversed! Now she was loved, and it was she who would break her lover's heart. Yet still the same swift longing for death....
They walked on slowly. Barry's head was lowered. Finally he asked thickly: "Don't you love me, then?"
She bent her head lower and could not answer. The fault was her own, and he must suffer for it. Yet stealthy colour crept back into her cheeks; her mood grew muddy and subtly defiant. Was not he making her suffer?
It wasn't, she blindly felt, so much that she didn't love him, as that, strangely and tragically, he must be all to her—and she could not face it.
How strange it was! How unpremeditated and utterly tragic! In his pocket huddling against the little box with its precious prisoner, was a letter in which the amplest and most ardent affection was expressed. It was a letter which expressed an earnest desire for his coming—so eager. Barry was bewildered. What did such lightning-swift changes of heart signify? Had she only imagined herself in love? What was this that had come to him? Had he come out of the desert for nothing after all? Was all the promise of new life sheer illusion?
They walked on a little way and then turned slowly back.