Friendship and Folly: A Novel

by Maria Louise Pool

"Yes," Lawrence heard himself saying, carelessly, "she's always happy in a boat. How did the tennis match come out? Eustace won, of course?"

Then Lawrence walked slowly from the station by this man's side, and put questions about the tennis match, and seemed interested in the lengthy replies. But when he was at last left alone he strode eagerly down to the wharves. He knew there was no regular conveyance to Matanzas, but as he felt now he would go if he had to walk or swim there. He would not try to analyze or subdue the fury in his heart. It was not that he was jealous in the ordinary sense of the word. But that broken promise gave him a poignant and terrible sense of desecration.

As he asked here and there at the wharves for a sailboat, he could hardly bring himself to listen to the replies because of the agony of humiliation that overwhelmed him. He recalled with piercing vividness every look and tone as his wife had given the promise. What had she meant? And did she love him? Impossible to doubt it; and yet—The sting of that "yet" was unbearable.

He found a small sailboat which he could hire. The wind was just right, and he started. It seemed to him that he did not look to the right or left as his boat glided down between the Florida bank and the shore of Anastasia Island. The soft air was sweet with the smells of pine woods and salt water. The white gulls flew over him; the marsh ponies galloped up to the brink of the river to look at him, then as he came nearer they snorted and galloped away again, mane and tail flying.

It was several hours before his craft sailed up to the rickety old wharf near the ruin of the Spanish fort.

Two or three people were strolling on the beach, poking the fiddler-crabs with canes, or looking idly off about them.

"Hullo, Lawrence; so you decided you'd come, after all, eh?"

"Yes; thought better of it when I found I got back from Jacksonville in time."

Lawrence would not ask concerning his wife. A burning pain seemed to have seized his heart. He had not eaten since morning, and then but a few morsels of food. He was obliged to battle against a certain tremor of the limbs that sometimes came upon him. He walked along among the fiddler-crabs that were everywhere darting into their holes and then coming out again. He examined these crabs as if they were of the greatest interest to him. He talked a great deal with the people he met. Two or three of them spoke afterwards of his appearance, and some averred that there was a peculiar expression in his eyes. But there are people who make use of such phrases after a thing has happened.