CHAPTER XVI
AN ULTIMATUM
With the beginning of March the end of the so-called social season, south of Jupiter Light, is close at hand. First, the great winter hotels close; then, one by one, doors and gates of villa and cottage are locked, bright awnings and lawn shades furled and laid away, blinds bolted, flags lowered. All summer long villa and caravansary alike stand sealed and silent amid their gardens, blazing under the pale fierce splendour of an unclouded sky; tenantless, save where, beside opened doors of quarters, black recumbent figures sprawl asleep, shiny faces fairly sizzling in the rays of a vertical sun.
The row of shops facing the gardens, the white streets, quay, pier, wharf are deserted and silent. Rarely a human being passes; the sands are abandoned except by some stray beach-comber; only at the station remains any sign of life where trains are being loaded for the North, or roll in across the long draw-bridge, steaming south to that magic port from which the white P. and O. steamers sail away into regions of eternal sunshine.
So passes Palm Beach into its long summer sleep; and the haunts of men are desolate. But it is otherwise with the Wild.
Night and the March moon awake the winter-dormant wilderness from the white man's deadening spell. Now, unrestrained, the sound of negro singing floats inland on the sea-wind from inlet, bar, and glassy-still lagoon; great, cumbersome, shadowy things lumber down to tidewater—huge turtles on egg-laying intent. In the dune-hammock the black bear, crab-hungry, awakes from his December sleep and claws the palmetto fruit; the bay lynx steals beachward; a dozen little deaths hatch from the diamond-back, alive; and the mean gray fox uncurls and scratches ticks, grinning, red-gummed, at the moon.
Edging the Everglades, flat-flanked panthers prowl, ears and tail-tips twitching; doe and buck listen from the cypress shades; the razor-back clatters his tusks, and his dull and furry ears stand forward and his dull eyes redden. Then the silver mullet leap in the moonlight, and the tiger-owl floats soundlessly to his plunging perch, and his daring yellow glare flashes even when an otter splashes or a tiny fawn stirs.
And very, very far away, under the stars, rolls the dull bull-bellow of the 'gator, labouring, lumbering, clawing across the saw-grass seas; and all the little striped pigs run, bucking madly, to their dangerous and silent dam who listens, rigid, horny nose aquiver in the wind.
So wakes the Wild when the white men turn northward under the March moon; and, as though released from the same occult restraint, tree and shrub break out at last into riotous florescence: swamp maple sets the cypress shade afire; the cassava lights its orange elf-lamps; dogwood snows in the woods; every magnolia is set with great white chalices divinely scented, and the Royal Poinciana crowns itself with cardinal magnificence.
All day long brilliant butterflies hover on great curved wings over the jungle edge; all day long the cock-quail whistles from wall and hedge, and the crestless jays, sapphire winged, flit across the dunes. Red-bellied woodpeckers gossip in live-oak, sweet-gum, and ancient palm; gray squirrels chatter from pine to bitter-nut; the iridescent little ground-doves, mated for life, run fearlessly under foot or leap up into snapping flight with a flash of saffron-tinted wings. Under the mangroves the pink ajajas preen and wade; and the white ibis walks the woods like a little absent-minded ghost buried in unearthly reverie.
Truly when madam closes her Villa Tillandsia, and when Coquina Court is bereft of mistress and household—butler, footman, maid, and flunky; and when Tsa-na Lah-ni is abandoned by its handsome chatelaine, and the corridors of the vast hotels are dark, it is fashion, not common sense that stirs the flock of gaily gregarious immigrants into premature northern flight; for they go, alas! just as the southland clothes itself in beauty, and are already gone when the Poinciana opens, leaving Paradise to blossom for the lesser brothers of the woodland and the dark-skinned children of the sun.
The toddling Moses of the Exodus, as usual, was Courtlandt Classon; the ornamental Miriam, Mrs. O'Hara; and the children of the preferred stock started North with cymbals and with dances, making a joyful noise, and camping en route at Ormond—vastly more beautiful than the fashion-infested coral reef from which they started—at Saint Augustine, on corporate compulsion, at the great inns of Hampton, Hot Springs, and Old Point, for fashion's sake—taking their falling temperature by degrees—as though any tropic could compare with the scorching suffocation of Manhattan town.
Before the Beach Club closed certain species of humanity left in a body, including a number of the unfledged, and one or two pretty opportunists. Portlaw went, also Malcourt.
It required impudence, optimism, and executive ability for Malcourt to make his separate adieux and render impartial justice on each occasion.
There was a girl at "The Breakers" who was rather apt to slop over, so that interview was timed for noon, when the sun dries up everything very quickly, including such by-products as tears.
Then there was Miss Suydani to ride with at five o'clock on the beach, where the chain of destruction linked mullet and osprey and ended with the robber eagle—and Malcourt—if he chose.
But here there were no tears for the westering sun to dry, only strangely quenched eyes, more green than blue, for Malcourt to study, furtively; only the pale oval of a face to examine, curiously, and not too cynically; and a mouth, somewhat colourless, to reassure without conviction—also without self-conviction. This was all—except a pair of slim, clinging hands to release when the time came, using discretion—and some amiable firmness if required.
They were discussing the passing of the old régime, for lack of a safer theme; and he had spoken flippantly of the decadence of the old families—his arm around her and her pale cheek against his shoulder.
She listened rather absently; her heart was very full and she was thinking of other matters. But as he continued she answered at length, hesitating, using phrases as trite and quaintly stilted as the theme itself, gently defending the old names he sneered at. And in her words he savoured a certain old-time flavour of primness and pride—a vaguely delicate hint of resentment, which it amused him to excite. Pacing the dunes with her waist enlaced, he said, to incite retort:
"The old families are done for. Decadent in morals, in physique, mean mentally and spiritually, they are even worse off than respectfully cherished ruins, because they are out of fashion; they and their dingy dwellings. Our house is on the market; I'd be glad to see it sold only Tressilvain will get half."
"In you," she said, "there seems to be other things, besides reverence, which are out of fashion."
He continued, smilingly: "As the old mansions disappear, Virginia, so disintegrate those families whose ancestors gave names to the old lanes of New Amsterdam. I reverence neither the one nor the other. Good riddance! The fit alone survive."
"I still survive, if you please."
"Proving the rule, dear. But, yourself excepted, look at the few of us who chance to be here in the South. Look at Courtlandt Classon, intellectually destitute! Cuyp, a mental brother to the ox; and Vetchen to the ass; and Mrs. Van Dieman to somebody's maidservant—that old harridan with all the patrician distinction of a Dame des Halles—"
"Please, Louis!"
"Dear, I am right. Even Constance Palliser, still physically superb, but mentally morbid—in love with what once was Wayward—with the ghost she raised in her dead girlhood, there on the edge of yesterday—"
"Louis! Louis! And you! What were you yesterday? What are you to-day?"
"What do I care what I was and am?—Dutch, British, burgher, or cavalier?—What the deuce do I care, my dear? The Malcourts are rotten; everybody knows it. Tressilvain is worse; my sister says so. As I told you, the old families are done for—all except yours—"
"I am the last of mine, Louis."
"The last and best—"
"Are you laughing?"
"No; you are the only human one I've ever heard of among your race—the sweetest, soundest, best—"
"I?… What you say is too terrible to laugh at. I—guilty in mind—unsound—contaminated—"
"Temporarily. I'm going to-night. Time and absence are the great antiseptics. When the corrupt cause disappears the effect follows. Cheer up, dear; I take the night train."
But she only pressed her pale face closer to his shoulder. Their interlocked shadows, huge, fantastic, streamed across the eastern dunes as they moved slowly on together.
"Louis!"
"Yes?"
She could not say it. Close to the breaking point, she was ready now to give up to him more than he might care for—the only shred left which she had shrunk from letting him think was within his reach for the asking—her name.
Pride, prejudice, had died out in the fierce outbreak of a heart amazingly out of place in the body of one who bore her name.
Generations of her kinsmen, close and remote, had lived in the close confines of narrow circles—narrow, bloodless, dull folk, almost all distantly related—and they had lived and mated among themselves, coldly defiant of that great law which dooms the over-cultivated and inbred to folly and extinction.
Somewhere, far back along the race-line, some mongrel ancestor had begun life with a heart; and, unsuspected, that obsolete organ had now reappeared in her, irritating, confusing, amazing, and finally stupefying her with its misunderstood pulsations.
At first, like a wounded creature, consciousness of its presence turned her restless, almost vicious. Then from cynicism to incredulity she had passed the bitter way to passion, and the shamed recoil from it; to recklessness, and the contempt for it, and so through sorrow and humility to love—if it were love to endure the evil in this man and to believe in the good which he had never yet revealed to her save in a half-cynical, half-amused content that matters rest in statu quo.
"The trouble with us," mused Malcourt, lazily switching the fragrant beach-grapes with his riding-crop, "is inbreeding. Yes, that's it. And we know what it brings to kings and kine alike. Tressilvain is half-mad, I think. And we are used up and out of date.... The lusty, jewelled bacchantes who now haunt the inner temple kindle the social flames with newer names than ours. Few of us count; the lumbering British or Dutch cattle our race was bred from, even in these brief generations, have become decadent and barren; we are even passing from a fashion which we have neither intellect to sustain nor courage to dictate to. It's the raw West that is to be our Nemesis, I think.... 'Mix corpuscles or you die!'—that's what I read as I run—I mean, saunter; the Malcourts never run, except to seed. My, what phosphorescent perversion! One might almost mistake it for philosophy.... But it's only the brilliancy of decay, Virginia; and it's about time that the last Malcourt stepped down and out of the scheme of things. My sister is older, but I don't mind going first—even if it is bad manners."
"Is that why you have never asked me to marry you?" she said, white as a ghost.
Startled to silence he walked on beside her. She had pressed her pallid face against his shoulder again; one thin hand crushed her gloves and riding-crop into her hip, the other, doubled, left in the palm pale imprints of her fingers.
"Is that the reason?" she repeated.
"No, dear."
"Is it because you do not care for me—enough?"
"Partly. But that is easily remedied."
"Or"—with bent head—"because you think too—lightly—of me—"
"No! That's a lie anyway."
"A—a lie?"
"Yes. You lie to yourself if you think that! You are not that sort. You are not, and you never were and never could be. Don't you suppose I know?"—almost with a sneer: "I won't have it—nor would you! It is you, not I, who have controlled this situation; and if you don't realise it I do. I never doubted you even when you prattled to me of moderation. I know that you were not named with your name in mockery, or in vain."
Dumb, thrilled, understanding in a blind way what this man had said, dismayed to find safety amid the elements of destruction, a sudden belief in herself—in him, too, began to flicker. "Had the still small flame been relighted for her? Had it never entirely died?"
"If—you will have me, Louis," she whispered.
"I don't love you. I'm rather nearer than I ever have been just now. But I am not in love."
"Could you ever—"
"Yes."
"Then—why—"
"I'll tell you why, some day. Not now."
They had come to where their horses were tied. He put her up, adjusted boot-strap and skirt, then swung gracefully aboard his own pie-faced Tallahassee nag, wheeling into the path beside her.
"The world," observed Malcourt, using his favourite quotation, "is so full of a number of things—like you and me and that coral snake yonder.... It's very hard to make a coral snake bite you; but it's death if you succeed.... Whack that nag if he plunges! Lord, what a nose for sarpints horses have! Hamil was telling me—by the way, there's nothing degenerate about our distant cousin, John Garret Hamil; but he's not pure pedigree. However, I'd advise him to marry into some fresh, new strain—"
"He seems likely to," said Virginia.
After a moment Malcourt looked around at her curiously.
"Do you mean Shiela Cardross?"
"Obviously."
"You think it safe?"—mockingly.
"I wouldn't care if I were a man."
"Oh! I didn't suppose that a Suydam could approve of her."
"I do now—with envy.... You are right about the West. Do you know that it seems to me as though in that girl all sections of the land were merged, as though the freshest blood of all nations flowing through the land had centred and mingled to produce that type of physical perfection! It is a curious idea—isn't it, Louis?—to imagine that the brightest, wholesomest, freshest blood of the nations within this nation has combined to produce such a type! Suppose it were so. After all is it not worth dispensing with a few worn names to look out at the world through those fearless magnificent eyes of hers—to walk the world with such limbs and such a body? Did you ever see such self-possession, such superb capacity for good and evil, such quality and texture!… Oh, yes, I am quite crazy about her—like everybody and John Garret Hamil, third."
"Is he?"
She laughed. "Do you doubt it?"
Malcourt drew bridle, fished for his case, and lighted a cigarette; then he spurred forward again, alert, intent, head partly turned in that curious attitude of listening, though Virginia was riding now in pensive silence.
"Louis," she said at last, "what is it you hear when you seem to listen that way. It's uncanny."
"I'll tell you," he said. "My father had a very pleasant, persuasive voice.... I was fond of him.... And sometimes I still argue with him—in the old humourous fashion—"
"What?"—with a shiver.
"In the old amusing way," continued Malcourt quietly. "Sometimes he makes suggestions to me—curious suggestions—easy ways out of trouble—and I listen—as you noticed."
The girl looked at him, reined up closer, and bent forward, looking him intently in the eyes.
"Well, dear?" inquired Malcourt, with a smile.
But she only straightened up in her saddle, a chill creeping in her veins.
A few moments later he suggested that they gallop. He was obliged to, for he had other interviews awaiting him. Also Portlaw, in a vile humour with the little gods of high and low finance.
One of these interviews occurred after his final evening adieux to the Cardross family and to Hamil. Shiela drove him to the hotel in Gray's motor, slowly, when they were out of sight, at Malcourt's request.
"I wanted to give you another chance," he said. "I'm a little more selfish, this time—because, if I had a decent opportunity I think I'd try to fall in love with somebody or other—"
She flushed painfully, looking straight ahead over the steering-wheel along the blinding path of the acetylenes.
"I am very sorry," she said, "because I had—had almost concluded to tell them—everything."
"What!" he asked, aghast.
Her eyes were steadily fixed on the fan-shaped radiance ahead which played fantastically along the silvery avenue of palms and swept the white road with a glitter like moonlight streaming over snow.
"You mean you are ready for your freedom, Shiela?"
"No."
"What do you mean?"
"That—it may be best—best—to tell them … and face what is left of life, together."
"You and I?"
"Yes."
He sat beside her, dumb, incredulous, nimble wits searching for reasons. What was he to reckon with in this sudden, calm suggestion of a martyrdom with him? A whim? Some occult caprice?—or a quarrel with Hamil? Was she wearied of the deception? Or distrustful of herself, in her new love for Hamil, lest she be tempted to free herself after all? Was she already at that point where, desperate, benefits forgot, wavering between infatuation and loyalty, she turned, dismayed, to the only course which must crush temptation for ever?
"Is that it?" he asked.
"What?" Her lips moved, forming the word without sound.
"Is it because you are so sorely tempted to free yourself at their expense?"
"Partly."
"You poor child!"
"No child now, Louis.... I have thought too deeply, too clearly. There is no childhood left in me. I know things.... You will help me, won't you—if I find I need you?"
"Need me, Shiela?"
"I may," she said excitedly; "you can't tell; and I don't know. It is all so confused. I thought I knew myself but I seem to have just discovered a devil looking back at me out of my own reflected eyes from my own mirror!"
"What an exaggerated little thing you are!" he said, forcing a laugh.
"Am I? It must be part of me then. I tell you, since that day they told me what I am, I have wondered what else I might be. I don't know, but I'm watching. There are changes—omens, sinister enough to frighten me—"
"Are you turning morbid?"
"I don't know, Louis. Am I? How can I tell? Whom am I to ask? I could ask my own mother if I had one—even if it hurt her. Mothers are made for pain—as we young girls are. Miserable, wretched, deceitful, frightened as I am I could tell her—tell her all.... The longing to have her, to tell her has become almost—almost unendurable—lately.... I have so much need of her.... You don't know the desolation of it—and the fear! I beg your pardon for talking this way. It's over now. You see I am quite calm."
"Can't you confide in your—other mother—"
"I have no right. She did not bear me."
"It is the same as though you were her own; she feels so—"
"She cannot feel so! Nor can I. If I could I would take my fears and sorrows and my sins to her. I could take them to my own mother, for both our sakes; I cannot, to her, for my own sake alone. And never can."
"Then—I don't understand! You have just suggested telling her about ourselves, haven't you?"
"Yes. But not that it has been a horror—a mistake. If I tell her—if I think it necessary—best—to tell them, I—it will be done with mask still on—cheerfully—asking pardon with a smile—I do not lack that kind of courage. I can do that—if I must."
"There will be a new ceremony?"
"If they wish.... I can't—can't talk of it yet, unless I'm driven to it—"
He looked quietly around at her. "What drives you, Shiela?"
Her eyes remained resolutely fixed on the road ahead, but her cheeks were flaming; and he turned his gaze elsewhere, thoughtful, chary of speech, until at last the lights of the station twinkled in the north.
Then he said, carelessly friendly: "I'll just say this: that, being of no legitimate use to anybody, if you find any use for me, you merely need to say so."
"Thank you, Louis."
"No; I thank you! It's a new sensation—to be of legitimate use to anybody. Really, I'm much obliged."
"Don't speak so bitterly—"
"Not at all. Short of being celestially translated and sinlessly melodious on my pianola up aloft, I had no hope of ever being useful to you and Hamil—"
She turned a miserable and colourless face to his and he ceased, startled at the tragedy in such young eyes.
Then he burst out impulsively: "Oh, why don't you cut and run with him! Why, you little ninny, if I loved anybody like that I'd not worry over the morals of it!"
"What!" she gasped.
"Not I! Make a nunnery out of me if you must; clutch at me for sanctuary, if you want to; I'll stand for it! But if you'll listen to me you'll give up romantic martyrdom and sackcloth, put on your best frock, smile on Hamil, and go and ask your mother for a bright, shiny, brand-new divorce."
Revolted, incensed, eyes brilliant with anger, she sat speechless and rigid, clutching the steering-wheel as he nimbly descended to the platform.
"Good-bye, Shiela," he said with a haggard smile. "I meant well—as usual."
Something about him as he stood there alone in the lamp's white radiance stilled her anger by degrees.
"Good-bye," she said with an effort.
He nodded, replaced his hat, and turned away.
"Good-bye, Louis," she said more gently.
He retraced his steps, and stood beside the motor, hat off. She bent forward, generous, as always, and extended her hand.
"What you said to me hurt," she said. "Do you think it would not be easy for me to persuade myself? I believe in divorce with all my heart and soul and intelligence. I know it is right and just. But not for me.... Louis—how can I do this thing to them? How can I go to them and disclose myself as a common creature of common origin and primitive impulse, showing the crack in the gay gilding and veneer they have laboured to cover me with?… I cannot.... I could endure the disgrace myself; I cannot disgrace them. Think of the ridicule they would suffer if it became known that for two years I had been married, and now wanted a public divorce? No! No! There is nothing to do, nothing to hope for.... If it is—advisable—I will tell them, and take your name openly.... I am so uncertain, so frightened at moments—so perplexed. There is no one to tell me what to do.... And, believe me, I am sorry for you—I am deeply, deeply sorry! Good-bye."
"And I for you," he said. "Good-bye."
She sat in her car, waiting, until the train started.