BESIDE THE SUMMER SEA: AN INTERLUDE
If I had been at my wits' end before, I was now beyond it, in such a chaos of puzzled anger that I could not even think reasonably, much less come to sensible conclusions. The Italian sailor with his impossible charge against Mr. Tabor's own impossible charge against me, were new elements which might or might not work into the situation; but at least I could not place them now; nor, for want of a motive that would bear dissection, was I ready to confess my own desire to stay on the ground until I had seen the matter through. I would go away to the sanity of the seaside, and give the vexations of the last few days time to clear. The whole experience had been so strange that I must have more perspective through which to view it clearly; and I could see nothing to gain by haste. For all that, I was perfectly clear that at length everything must come out right. Not that I could define to myself exactly what "coming out right" would mean, except making Mr. Tabor admit himself outrageously mistaken, and his daughter—but it was better not to think about his daughter; unless I was ready to risk thinking too much about her. The very memory of her vivid face in the car-window, of her quizzical impertinences on the way, the sight of her lying motionless in the unnatural meadow, and most poignant of all, her distressed and shrouded beauty in the dim hall, lit up the last few hours as with the glamour of a dream broken suddenly by a nightmare monstrous and unconvincing. She must be put aside if possible with the rest until I could see clearly. Bob Ainslie and Mrs. Bob, boating, bathing, golf, and tennis, should be my devouring interests for the next week. After that—we should see.
For a couple of miles my car traveled through open country; then with the Sound on its left, passed through small wooded patches that gave way continually to open glades where lawns from little cottages and great ran down to the water's edge. My destined hostelry, I remembered, flourished under the original name of "Bellevue." I did not especially pine for it, with its green-lined matting, white enameled furniture, and chattering piazzas; but it had the unquestionable advantage of being only a couple of hundred yards from the Ainslies' cottage. There I hurried into my flannels and set forth in search of Bob, whom I found playing the gentle game of croquet with himself, the pink ball against the green. When he saw me, he gave a viking whoop that brought Mrs. Ainslie from her chair upon the veranda, while he executed a solemn war-dance around me.
"Where, O where are the Hebrew children?" he chanted, "Safe now in the promised land—where's your bag?"
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Crosby?" said Mrs. Ainslie. "Bob, what on earth will the neighbors think of you? And Mr. Crosby will hardly like being called a Hebrew—not that I have anything against the Hebrews. They are really a very fine people, but—"
"But, my dear, you are talking nonsense. Laurie, where is that bag? Or Heaven grant it be a trunk."
"It's a bag," I said, "and I left it in my room at the Bellevue, and a very good room it is."
"Bellefiddlesticks," Bob snorted. "You go back to that whited caravansary and wrest away your belongings and come over here. We are going to house-party in a couple of days, and we need you in our business. Your room is now southeast corner second floor, beautiful view of the Sound or within sound of the view—whichever you please."
"You are an idiot, but I love you," said I. "Nevertheless, I'm going to stay where I am. Can't be bothered with house parties. I came down here for some exercise."
"I think you look tired," Mrs. Ainslie put in thoughtfully.
"He looks sulky to me," said Bob. "All right, stay where you are until you feel the need of a decent bed. Bet I can beat you at croquet and give you two wickets."
"You are a fattening, indolent person," I said. "What I want, and what you stand in crying need of, is exercise," and I dragged him off to the hotel tennis-courts.
I was very sure in my own mind that I wanted the scuffling solitude of a hotel. My temper felt unsettled, and the last people in the world I wanted to meet were a lot of conversational visitors. Bob had a hard future cut out for him, and indeed for three days I led him a life that must have nearly killed him. Perhaps he may have scented some trouble behind my unusual energy, for he stuck to me like a man losing to me at tennis, beating me in long games of golf, bathing with me in the morning, and taking an oar as we rowed Mrs. Bob about in the evening.
Miss Tabor had spoken of a coming visit; but of course after the disturbances in her home she would have abandoned all plans. And I certainly did not care to start the bantering flood of questions which I knew Bob could not restrain should I show even the mildest curiosity about her coming. And yet she came. I had come over prepared to drag Bob to the altar of another strenuous day, and I found her sitting alone on the veranda as quietly at ease as though nothing had happened. I was not even sure that she looked tired; certainly she looked serene. She stood up and shook hands with me smilingly. I thought the blue veins throbbed a trifle in her throat, but her manner was frankly free from embarrassment.
"You are getting a very seaside color, Mr. Crosby," she said. "Your vacation must be agreeing with you."
I could not answer for a moment; then, as she drew her hand from mine, "What have I done?" I stammered. "What was it all about? Did you too really believe—"
I stopped, for she was looking coldly past me, her face blank and her eyebrows raised.
"I beg your pardon," I said, taken utterly aback. Her silence seemed to strike across me like a blow. "I beg your pardon, Miss Tabor," and I swung upon my heel.
When I reached the steps, she called after me.
"Mr. Crosby!" I turned. "Bob wants to know why we shouldn't all play tennis together. He thinks that he and Mary can beat us."
I stood amazed. She was looking at me gaily, almost provokingly, every trace of coldness gone from the eyes that looked frankly into mine. She moved mentally too fast for me. I could read nothing but the end of our friendship in her look of a moment ago; and now she spoke as if no shadow of mystery or misunderstanding had ever fallen between us. Of course, the surface of it was that I had blundered, and that she had taken the only way of showing me that my memories of her trouble must be really forgotten. The last few days were never to have been.
The Ainslies came out of the door together. "And you never told us that you had met Miss Tabor last Christmas," said Bob. "I call that rather cool. I just mentioned you last night, and she asked all sorts of questions about how long you had been here and how long you expected to stay. For my part, I think you must have made quite an impression."
"Indeed he has," laughed Miss Tabor. "Do you know, Mary, Mr. Crosby is the only thoroughly frivolous institution of learning I ever saw. He never spoke a word all Christmas that added to the party's fund of information, except to tell us of a new and a more indigestible way to make Welsh rarebit."
Evidently Christmas was to be the last and only time that we had met. I thanked fate and my own discomfiture that I had let fall no word to the Ainslies and we went off to our tennis. We won our game rather easily. Miss Tabor played a shade better than the average woman, covering her court with a forethoughtful ease that did the work without wasting exertion. She seemed not athletic, but to do outdoor things as some other woman might move through a ball-room. When we had finished playing, Bob was a dripping ruin, and Mrs. Ainslie and I vigorously hot; but Miss Tabor, who had done no less than her share, laid aside her racquet as coolly as she had taken it up.
All the way down to the beach she kept the three of us in such a shout of laughter that staider people glanced aside at us. I made the change into a bathing-suit with abandoned haste, yet I found her waiting. The sea was evidently a passion with her as it was with me. Her eyes were shining with excitement, her head thrown a little back, and all her slim body, tender in every graceful line, was vibrant with the thrill of the salt air. She gave me her hand as a child might have done, and we turned up the beach, running lightly until the voices of the bathers died behind us.
Suddenly she stopped. "Do you feel that way about it, too?" she asked.
"What way? As if the first plunge of the year were a sort of sacred rite?"
"Yes," she answered. "There is something about it—you feel as if it were such a splendid thing that after all your waiting for it—now, when the water is there before you, you must wait a little sacrificial moment. I didn't feel like going in just at the first among all those people. Do you understand what I mean? I suppose it's because on the first day I have always gone in alone early in the morning."
I nodded, for that had been my custom also. Without a word we turned together and went slowly down into the water. When it reached her waist, she threw her hands above her head and dived, swimming under water with long easy strokes. I looked after her a moment, then followed. We came to the surface together, drawing our breath deep and shaking the salt water from our eyes. We swam slowly back to the more crowded beach, mutually glorying in our pagan rite of baptism.
We stretched out lazily in the hot sand, leaning back against a battered and upturned dory. Lady had shaken down her hair, which her bathing cap had failed to keep altogether dry; and spread it lustrously dark upon the clean, sun-bleached planking.
"I think I understand you now a little better, Mr. Crosby," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"I suppose because of the solemn rite of the first plunge. It somehow makes you clearer. If that is what you mean by romance, why I can agree with you."
I had to be honest. "No, that's not all I mean—only part. I want things to happen to me, not merely sensations. I'm always foolishly expecting some tilt with fortune at the next turn of the road. I suppose you were right that nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't hunt so for the physical uplift of the unexpected. I don't want to be merely selfish—I want to help in the world, not to harm. I know that sounds crudely sentimental, but it's hard to say. I mean, for instance, that I don't want distress to prove myself against, but I do want the shock of battle where distress exists."
"Then people must seem to you merely means to an end."
"I suppose it must look that way to you"
"I suppose it must look that way to you," I said uncomfortably. "I'm getting tangled, but I want you to understand—" I hesitated. "When I asked questions in the hurry of the other night, it wasn't any desire to force my way into things that didn't concern me, to make an adventure of what distressed you—you mustn't think that. But it seemed to me that you were in trouble, and I wanted—"
I stopped, for her face had clouded as I spoke until now I dared speak no more, blaming myself that the perplexities that possessed me had again blundered across her pain. Her eyes were upon the ground where her fingers burrowed absently in the sand. When she raised them to mine there were tears in them; but they were tears unshed, and eyes that looked at me kindly.
"Please don't," she said. "I do understand. I would like to let you help, but—there is nothing you can help about, nothing that I can ask or tell."
"Forgive me," I said, and looked away from her.
I think that from that morning we were better friends. Neither of us again made any allusion to the night of alarm; but it was as if both now felt a share in it, a kind of blindfold sympathy not altogether comfortless. Once when we were making a long tour of woods and beaches, she said suddenly: "You don't talk much about yourself, Mr. Crosby."
"Don't I?" I answered. "Well, I don't suppose that what I am or have done in the world would be particularly interesting. You were right the other day, after all: nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't be so hungry for adventures."
"Oh, but you must have had some adventure; everybody has."
I launched into a tale of a green parrot confiscated from an itinerant vendor and sold at auction in a candy store. I stopped suddenly. Was this her way of verifying her father's opinion of me? She read my half-formed suspicion like a flash.
"Listen," she said with quick seriousness. "If I had, or could have, the faintest belief in anything really bad about you, don't you see that I shouldn't be here? I want you to remember that."
"I ought to have known," I replied. "I'm very sorry."
With that she swung back into gaiety, demanding the conclusion of the tale; but I was for the moment too deeply touched to follow. We were on our way home; and before us where the path took a little turn about a tree larger than its neighbors, a man stepped into our sight. He was walking fast, covering the ground in long nervous strides. He carried a bit of stick with which he switched smartly at the bushes along the path. For a moment we were both silent, then Lady caught her breath in a long sigh. It was the man we had met at the gate. He saw us then, and took off his hat.
"Why, Walter," Lady cried; "when did you come?"
"Just now," he said, "just now. Ainslie told me where to look for you. Good fellow, Ainslie. Said you and Mr. What's-his-name—beg pardon, I never can remember names—said you had gone for a walk."
She flushed a little. "Mr. Crosby, let me introduce Doctor Reid. His memory never can catch up with him, but you mustn't mind that. Walter, Mr. Crosby was a classmate of Bob Ainslie's, you know."
"So he said; so he said." Doctor Reid jerked out the words, frowning and biting his forefinger. "Excuse me, Lady, but—hold on a second. Got to go back next car, twelve forty-five." He looked at his watch. "Twelve seven now. Beg your pardon, Mr.—Mr. Crosby. Beg your pardon."
They spoke together for a moment, and we continued our walk uncomfortably. Miss Tabor seemed uneasy, and I thought that Doctor Reid restrained himself to our slower pace as if he resented having to wait and thought ill of me for my very existence. I caught him frowning sidelong at me once or twice, and shooting little anxious glances at Lady that angered me unreasonably.
I left them at the Ainslies' and went on to a hurried luncheon made tasteless by irritation. Who in Heaven's name was the man? A family physician would hardly go running about the country in the daughter's wake—for I could not doubt that it was she that had brought him here. Why on earth should he be rude to me? I had never met the man. What business had he to behave as if he resented my being with her—or for that matter, to resent anything she did? We had planned a game of tennis for the afternoon, and Doctor Reid, I reflected, with savage satisfaction, could hardly be expected to make a third.
Bob met me at the door. "Hello, old man," he said, "we have had a bitter loss; Doctor Reid has carried Lady off with him to his distant lair."