The Firing Line

"Hamil," he said, "whatever is harsh, aggressive, cynical, mean, sneering, selfish in me has been externally acquired. You scrape even a spineless mollusc too long with a pin, and the irritation produces a defensive crust. I began boy-like by being so damned credulous and impulsive and affectionate and tender-hearted that even my kid sister laughed at me; and she was only three years older than I. Then followed that period of social loneliness, the longing for the companionship of boys and girls—girls particularly, in spite of agonies of shyness and the awakening terrors of shame when the domestic troubles ended in an earthquake which gave me to my father and Helen to my mother, and a scandal to the newspapers.... O hell! I'm talking like an autobiography! Don't go, if you can stand it for a moment longer; I'm never likely to do it again."

Hamil, silent and uncomfortable, stood stiffly upright, gloved hands resting on the balustrade behind him. Malcourt continued to stare at the orange-and-yellow butterflies dancing over the snowy beds of blossoms.

"In college it was the same," he said. "I had few friends—and no home to return to after—my father-died." He hesitated as though listening. Whenever he spoke of his father, which was seldom, he seemed to assume that curious listening attitude; as though the man, dead by his own hand, could hear him....

"Wayward saw me through. I've paid him back what he spent on me. You know his story; everybody does. I like him and sponge on him. We irritate each other; I'm a beast to resent his sharpness. But he's not right when he says I never had any illusions.... I had—and have.... I do beastly things, too.... Some men will do anything to crush out the last quiver of pride in them.... And the worst is that, mangled, torn, mine still palpitates—like one of your wretched, bloody quail gaping on its back! By God! At least, I couldn't do

that

!—

Kill

 for pleasure!—as better men than I do. And better women, too!… What am I talking about? I've done worse than that on impulse—meaning well, like other fools."

Malcourt's face had become drawn, sallow, almost sneering; but in the slow gaze he turned on Hamil was that blank hopelessness which no man can encounter and remember unmoved.

"Malcourt," he said, "you're morbid. Men like you; women like you—So do I—now—"

"It's too late. I needed that sort of thing when I was younger. Kindness arouses my suspicion now. Toleration is what it really is. I have no money, no social position here—or abroad; only a thoroughly discredited name in two hemispheres. It took several generations for the Malcourts to go to the devil; but I fancy we'll all arrive on time. What a reunion! I hate the idea of family parties, even in hell."

He straightened up gracefully and lighted his cigarette; then the easy smile twitched his dry lips again and he nodded mockingly at Hamil:

"Count on my friendship, Hamil; it's so valuable. It has already quite ruined one person's life, and will no doubt damage others before I flicker out."

"What do you mean, Malcourt?"

"What I say, old fellow. With the best intentions toward self-sacrifice I usually do irreparable damage to the objects of my regard. Beware my friendship, Hamil. There's no luck in it or me.... But I do like you."

He laughed and sauntered off into the house as Hamil's horse was brought around; and Hamil, traversing the terrace, mounted under a running fire of badinage from Shiela and Cecile who had just come from the tennis-courts to attempt some hated embroidery for the charity fair then impending.

So he rode away to his duties in the forest, leaving a placid sewing-circle on the terrace. From which circle, presently, Shiela silently detached herself, arms encumbered with her writing materials and silks. Strolling aimlessly along the balustrade for a while, watching the bees scrambling in the scarlet trumpet-flowers, she wandered into the house and through to the cool patio.

For some days, now, after Hamil's daily departure, it had happened that an almost unendurable restlessness akin to suspense took possession of her; a distaste and impatience of people and their voices, and the routine of the commonplace.

To occupy herself in idleness was an effort; she had no desire to. She had recently acquired the hammock habit, lying for hours in the coolness of the patio, making no effort to think, listening to the splash of the fountain, her book or magazine open across her breast. When people came she picked up the book and scanned its pages; sometimes she made pretence of sleeping.

But that morning, Malcourt, errant, found her reading in her hammock. Expecting him to pass his way as usual, she nodded with civil indifference, and continued her reading.

"I want to ask you something," he said, "if I may interrupt you."

"What is it, Louis?"

"May I draw up a chair?"

"Why—if you wish. Is there anything I can do for you? "—closing her book.

"Is there anything I can do for

you

, Shiela?"

A tinge of colour came into her cheeks.

"Thank you," she said in curt negation.

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite. What do you mean?"

"There is one thing I might do for your sake," he smiled—"blow my bally brains out."

She said in a low contemptuous voice: "Better resort to that for your own sake than do what you are doing to Miss Suydam."

"What am I doing to Miss Suydam?"

"Making love to her."

He sat, eyes idly following the slight swaying motion of her hammock, the smile still edging his lips.

"Don't worry about Miss Suydam," he said; "she can take care of herself. What I want to say is this: Once out of mistaken motives—which nobody, including yourself, would ever credit—I gave you all I had to give—my name.... It's not much of a name; but I thought you could use it. I was even fool enough to think—other things. And as usual I succeeded in injuring where I meant only kindness. Can you believe that?"

"I—think you meant it kindly," she said under her breath. "It was my fault, Louis. I do not blame you, if you really cared for me. I've told you so before."

"Yes, but I was ass enough to think

you

 cared for

me

."

She lay in her hammock, looking at him across the crimson-fringed border.

"There are two ways out of it," he said; "one is divorce. Have you changed your mind?"

"What is the other?" she asked coldly.

"That—if you could ever learn to care for me—we might try—" He stopped short.

For two years he had not ventured such a thing to her. The quick, bright anger warned him from her eyes. But she said quietly: "You know that is utterly impossible."

"Is it impossible. Shiela?"

"Absolutely. And a trifle offensive."

He said pleasantly: "I was afraid so, but I wanted to be sure. I did not mean to offend you. People change and mature in two years.... I suppose you are as angrily impatient of sentiment in a man as you were then."

"I cannot endure it—"

Her voice died out and she blushed furiously as the memory of Hamil flashed in her mind.

"Shiela," he said quietly, "now and then there's a streak of misguided decency in me. It cropped out that winter day when I did what I did. And I suppose it's cropping up now when I ask you, for your own sake, to get rid of me and give yourself a chance."

"How?"

"Legally."

"I cannot, and you know it."

"You are wrong. Do you think for one moment that your father and mother would accept the wretched sacrifice you are making of your life if they knew—"

"The old arguments again," she said impatiently.

"There is a

new

 argument," said Malcourt, staring at her.

"What new argument?"

"Hamil."

Then the vivid colour surged anew from neck to hair, and she rose in the hammock, bewildered, burning, incensed.

"If it were true," she stammered, leaning on one arm, "do you think me capable of disgracing my own people?"

"The disgrace will be mine and yours. Is not Hamil worth it?"

"No man is worth any wrong I do to my own family!"

"You are wronging more people than your own, Shiela—"

"It is not true!" she said breathlessly. "There is a nobler happiness than one secured at the expense of selfishness and ingratitude. I tell you, as long as I live, I will not have them know or suffer because of my disgraceful escapade with you! You probably meant well; I must have been crazy, I think. But we've got to endure the consequences. If there's unhappiness and pain to be borne, we've got to bear it—we alone—"

"And Hamil. All three of us."

She looked at him desperately; read in his cool gaze that she could not deceive him, and remained silent.

"What about Hamil's unhappiness?" repeated Malcourt slowly.

"If—if he has any, he requires no instruction how to bear it."

Malcourt nodded, then, with a weary smile: "I do not plead with you for my own chance of happiness. Yet, you owe me something, Shiela."

"What?"

"The right to face the world under true colours. You owe me that."

She whitened to the lips. "I know it."

"Suppose I ask for that right?"

"I have always told you that, if you demanded it, I would take your name openly."

"Yes; but now you admit that you love Hamil."

"Love! Love!" she repeated, exasperated. "What has that got to do with it? I know what the law of obligation is. You meant to be generous to me and you ruined your own life. If your future career requires me to publicly assume your name and a place in your household, I've told you that I'll pay that debt."

"Very well. When will you pay it?"

She blanched pitifully.

"When you insist, Louis."

"Do you mean you would go out there to the terrace,

now

!—and tell your mother what you've done?"

"Yes, if I must," she answered faintly.

"In other words, because you think you're in my debt, you stand ready to acknowledge, on demand, what I gave you—my name?"

Her lips moved in affirmation, but deep in her sickened eyes he saw terror unspeakable.

"Well," he said, looking away from her, "don't worry, Shiela. I'm not asking that of you; in fact I don't want it. That's not very complimentary, but it ought to relieve you.... I'm horribly sorry about Hamil; I like him; I'd like to do something for him. But if I attempted anything it would turn out all wrong.... As for you—well, you are plucky. Poor little girl! I wish I could help you out—short of a journey to eternity. And perhaps I'll take that before very long," he added gaily; "I smoke too many cigarettes. Cheer up, Shiela, and send me a few thousand for Easter."

He rose, gracefully as always, picked up the book from where it lay tumbled in the netting of the hammock, glanced casually through a page or two.

Still scanning the print, he said:

"I wanted to give you a chance; I'm going North in a day or two. It isn't likely we'll meet again very soon.... So I thought I'd speak.... And, if at any time you change your ideas—I won't oppose it."

"Thank you, Louis."

He was running over the pages rapidly now, the same unchanging smile edging his lips.

"The unexpected sometimes happens, Shiela—particularly when it's expected. There are ways and ways—particularly when one is tired—too tired to lie awake and listen any longer, or resist.... My father used to say that anybody who could use an anæsthetic was the equal of any graduate physician—"

"Louis! What do you mean?"

But his head was bent again in that curious attitude of listening; and after a moment he made an almost imperceptible gesture of acquiescence, and turned to her with the old, easy, half-impudent, half-challenging air.

"Gray has a butterfly in his collection which shows four distinct forms. Once people thought these forms were distinct species; now they know they all are the same species of butterfly in various suits of disguise—just as you might persuade yourself that unhappiness and happiness are radically different. But some people find satisfaction in being unhappy, and some find it in being happy; and as it's all only the gratification of that imperious egotism we call conscience, the specific form of all is simply ethical selfishness."

He laughed unrestrainedly at his own will-o'-the-wisp philosophy, looking very handsome and care-free there where the noon sun slanted across the white arcade all thick with golden jasmine bloom.

And Shiela, too intelligent to mistake him, smiled a little at his gay perversity.

He met Portlaw, later, at the Beach Club for luncheon; and, as the latter looked particularly fat, warm, and worried, Malcourt's perverse humour remained in the ascendant, and he tormented Portlaw until that badgered gentleman emitted a bellow of exasperation.

"What on earth's the matter?" asked Malcourt in pretended astonishment. "I thought I was being funny."

"Funny! Does a man want to be prodded with wit at his own expense when the market is getting funnier every hour—at his expense? Go and look at the tape if you want to know why I don't enjoy either your wit or this accursed luncheon."

"What's happening, Portlaw?"

"I wish you'd tell me."

"Muck-raking?"

"Partly, I suppose."

"Administration?"

"People say so. I don't believe it. There's a rotten lot of gambling going on. How do I know what's the matter?"

"Perhaps there isn't anything the matter, old fellow."

"Well, there is. I can sniff it 'way down here. And I'm going home to walk about and listen and sniff some more. Sag, sag, sag!—that's what the market has been doing for months. Yet, if I sell it short, it rallies on me and I'm chased to cover. I go long and the thing sags like the panties on that French count, yonder.... Who's the blond girl with him?"

"Hope springs eternal in the human beast," observed Malcourt. "Hope is a bird, Porty, old chap—"

"Hope is a squab," growled Portlaw, swallowing vast quantities of claret, "all squashy and full of pin-feathers. That's what hope is. It needs a thorough roasting, and it's getting it."

"Exquisite metaphor," mused Malcourt, gazing affably at the rather blond girl who crumbled her bread and looked occasionally and blankly at him, occasionally and affectionately at the French count, her escort, who was consuming lobster with characteristic Gallic thoroughness and abandon.

"The world," quoted Malcourt, "is so full of a number of things. You're one of 'em, Portlaw; I'm several.... Well, if you're going North I'd better begin to get ready."

"What have you got to do?"

"One or two friends of mine who preside in the Temple of Chance yonder. Oh, don't assume that babyish pout! I've won enough back to keep going for the balance of the time we remain."

Portlaw, pleased and relieved, finished his claret.

"You've a few ladies to take leave of, also," he said briskly.

"Really, Portlaw!"—in gentle admonition.

"Haw! Haw!" roared Portlaw, startling the entire café; "you'd better get busy. There'll be a run on the bank. There'll be a waiting line before Malcourt & Co. opens for business, each fair penitent with her little I.O.U. to be cashed! Haw! Haw! Sad dog! Bad dog! The many-sided Malcourt! Come on; I've got a motor across the—"

"And I've an appointment with several superfluous people and a girl," said Malcourt drily. Then he glanced at the blond companion of the count who continued crumbling bread between her brilliantly ringed fingers as though she had never before seen Louis Malcourt. The price of diamonds varies. Sometimes it is merely fastidious observance of convention and a sensitive escort. It all depends on the world one inhabits; it does indeed.

CHAPTER XIV

STRATEGY

An hour or two later that afternoon Wayward and Constance Palliser, Gussie Vetchen, and Livingston Cuyp gazed with variously mingled sentiments upon the torpid saurians belonging to one Alligator Joe in an enclosure rather remote from the hotel.

Vetchen bestowed largess upon the small, freckled boy attendant; and his distinguished disapproval upon the largest lady-crocodile which, with interlocked but grinning jaws, slumbered under a vertical sun in monochromatic majesty.

"One perpetual and gigantic simper," he said, disgusted.

"Rather undignified for a thing as big as that to lay eggs like a hen," observed Cuyp, not intending to be funny.

Wayward and Miss Palliser had wandered off together to inspect the pumps. Vetchen, always inquisitive, had discovered a coy manatee in one tank, and was all for poking it with his walking-stick until he saw its preposterous countenance emerge from the water.

"Great heavens," he faltered, "it looks like a Dutch ancestor of Cuyp's!"

Cuyp, intensely annoyed, glanced at his watch.

"Where the mischief did Miss Suydam and Malcourt go?" he asked Wayward. "I say, Miss Palliser, you don't want to wait here any longer, do you?"

"They're somewhere in the labyrinth," said Wayward. "Their chair went that way, didn't it, boy?"

"Yeth, thir," said the small and freckled attendant.

So the party descended the wooden incline to where their sleepy black chairmen lay on the grass, waiting; and presently the two double chairs wheeled away toward that amusing maze of jungle pathways cut through the impenetrable hammock, and popularly known as the labyrinth.

But Miss Suydam and Mr. Malcourt were not in the labyrinth. At that very moment they were slowly strolling along the eastern dunes where the vast solitude of sky and sea seemed to depress even the single white-headed eagle standing on the wet beach, head and tail adroop, motionless, fish-gorged. No other living thing was in sight except the slim, blue dragon-flies, ceaselessly darting among the beach-grapes; nothing else stirred except those two figures on the dunes, moving slowly, heads bent as though considering the advisability of every step in the breaking sands. There was a fixed smile on the girl's lips, but her eyes were mirthless, almost vacant.

"So you've decided to go?" she said.

"Portlaw decides that sort of thing for me."

"It's a case of necessity?"

Malcourt answered lightly: "He intends to go. Who can stop a fat and determined man? Besides, the season is over; in two weeks there will be nobody left except the indigenous nigger, the buzzards, and a few cast-off summer garments—"

"And a few cast-off winter memories," she said. "You will not take any away with you, will you?"

"Do you mean clothes?"

"Memories."

"I'll take some."

"Which?"

"All those concerning you."

"Thank you, Louis." They had got that far. And a trifle farther, for her hand, swinging next his, encountered it and their fingers remained interlocked. But there was no change of expression in her pretty, pale face as, head bent, shoulder to shoulder with him, she moved thoughtfully onward along the dunes, the fixed smile stamped on her lips.

"What are you going to do with your memories?" she asked. "Pigeon-hole and label them? Or fling them, like your winter repentance, in the Fire of Spring?"

"What are you going to do with yours, Virginia?"

"Nothing. They are not disturbing enough to destroy. Besides, unlike yours, they are my first memories of indiscretions, and they are too new to forget easily, too incredible yet to hurt. A woman is seldom hurt by what she cannot understand."

He passed one arm around her supple waist; they halted; he turned her toward him.

"What is it you don't understand?"

"This."

"My kissing you? Like this?"

She neither avoided nor returned the caress, looking at him out of impenetrable eyes more green than blue like the deep sea under changing skies.

"Is this what you don't understand, Virginia?"

"Yes; that—and your moderation."

His smile changed, but it was still a smile.

"Nor I," he said. "Like our friend, Warren Hastings, I am astonished. But there our resemblance ends."

The eagle on the wet sands ruffled, shook his silvery hackles, and looked around at them. Then, head low and thrust forward, he hulked slowly toward the remains of the dead fish from which but now he had retired in the disgust of satiation.

Meanwhile Malcourt and Miss Suydam were walking cautiously forward again, selecting every footstep as though treading on the crumbling edges of an abyss.

"It's rather stupid that I never suspected it," she said, musing aloud.

"Suspected what?"

"The existence of this other woman called Virginia Suydam. And I might have been mercifully ignorant of her until I died, if you had not looked at me and seen us both at once."

"We all are that way."

"Not all women, Louis. Have you found them so? You need not answer. There is in you, sometimes, a flash of infernal chivalry; do you know it? I can forgive you a great deal for it; even for discovering that other and not very staid person, so easily schooled, easily taught to respond; so easily thrilled, easily beguiled, easily caressed. Why, with her head falling back on your shoulder so readily, and her lips so lightly persuaded, one can scarcely believe her to have been untaught through all these years of dry convention and routine, or unaware of that depravity, latent, which it took your unerring faith and skill to discover and develop."

"How far have I developed it?"

She bent her delicate head: "I believe I have already admitted your moderation."

He shivered, walking forward without looking at her for a pace or two, then halted.

"Would you marry me?" he asked.

"I had rather not. You know it."

"Why?—once again."

"Because of my strange respect for that other woman that I am—or was."

"Which always makes me regret my—moderation," he said, wincing under the lash of her words. "But I'm not considering you! I'm considering the peace of mind of that other woman—not yours!" He took her in his arms, none too gently. "Not yours. I'd show no mercy to

you

\ There is only one kind of mercy you'd understand. Look into my eyes and admit it."

"Yes," she said.

"But your other self understands!"

"Why don't you destroy her?"

"And let her die in her contempt for me? You ask too much—Virginia-that-I-know. If that other Virginia-that-I-don't-know loved me, I'd kill

this

 one, not the other!"

"Do you care for that one, Louis?"

"What answer shall I make?"

"The best you can without lying."

"Then"—and being in his arms their eyes were close—"then I think I could love her if I had a chance. I don't know. I can deny myself. They say that is the beginning. But I seldom do—very seldom. And that is the best answer I can give, and the truest."

"Thank you.... And so you are going to leave me?"

"I am going North. Yes."

"What am I to do?"

"Return to your other self and forget me."

"Thank you again.... Do you know, Louis, that you have never once by hint or by look or by silence suggested that it was I who deliberately offered you the first provocation? That is another flicker of that infernal chivalry of yours."

"Does your other self approve?" he said, laughing.

"My other self is watching us both very closely, Louis. I—I wish, sometimes, she were dead! Louis! Louis! as I am now, here in your arms, I thought I had descended sufficiently to meet you on your own plane. But—you seem higher up—at moments.... And now, when you are going, you tell my other self to call in the creature we let loose together, for it will have no longer any counterpart to caress.... Louis! I

do

 love you; how can I let you go! Can you tell me? What am I to do? There are times—there are moments when I cannot endure it—the thought of losing the disgrace of your lips—your arms—the sound of your voice. Don't go and leave me like this—don't go—"

Miss Suydam's head fell. She was crying.

The eagle on the wet beach, one yellow talon firmly planted on its offal, tore strip after strip from the quivering mass. The sun etched his tinted shadow on the sand.

When the tears of Miss Suydam had been appropriately dried, they turned and retraced their steps very slowly, her head resting against his shoulder, his arm around her thin waist, her own hand hanging loosely, trailing the big straw hat and floating veil.

They spoke very seldom—very, very seldom. Malcourt was too busy thinking; Virginia too stunned to realise that, it was, now, her other austere self, bewildered, humiliated, desperate, which was walking amid the solitude of sky and sea with Louis Malcourt, there beneath the splendour of the westering sun.

The eagle, undisturbed, tore at the dead thing on the beach, one yellow talon embedded in the offal.

Their black chair-boy lay asleep under a thicket of Spanish bayonet.

"Arise, O Ethiope, and make ready unto us a chariot!" said Malcourt pleasantly; and he guided Virginia into her seat while the fat darky climbed up behind, rubbing slumber from his rolling and enormous eyes.

Half-way through the labyrinth they met Miss Palliser and Wayward.

"Where on earth have you been?" asked Virginia, so candidly that Wayward, taken aback, began excuses. But Constance Palliser's cheeks turned pink; and remained so during her silent ride home with Wayward.

Lately the world had not been spinning to suit the taste of Constance Palliser. For one thing Wayward was morose. Besides he appeared physically ill. She shrank from asking herself the reason; she might better have asked him for her peace of mind.

Another matter: Virginia, the circumspect, the caste-bound, the intolerant, the emotionless, was displaying the astounding symptoms peculiar to the minx! And she had neither the excuse of ignorance nor of extreme youth. Virginia was a mature maiden, calmly cognisant of the world, and coolly alive to the doubtful phases of that planet. And why on earth she chose to affiche herself with a man like Malcourt, Constance could not comprehend.

And another thing worried the pretty spinster—the comings, goings, and occult doings of her nephew with the most distractingly lovely and utterly impossible girl that fate ever designed to harass the soul of any young man's aunt.

That Hamil was already in love with Shiela Cardross had become painfully plainer to her every time she saw him. True, others were in love with Miss Cardross; that state of mind and heart seemed to be chronic at Palm Beach. Gussie Vetchen openly admitted his distinguished consideration, and Courtlandt Classon toddled busily about Shiela's court, and even the forlorn Cuyp had become disgustingly unfaithful and no longer wrinkled his long Dutch nose into a series of white corrugations when Wayward took Miss Palliser away from him. Alas! the entire male world seemed to trot in the wake of this sweet-eyed young Circe, emitting appealingly gentle and propitiating grunts.

"The very deuce is in that girl!" thought Constance, exasperated; "and the sooner Garry goes North the better. He's madly unhappy over her.... Fascinating little thing!

I

 can't blame him too much—except that he evidently realises he can't marry such a person—"

The chair rolled into the hotel grounds under the arch of jasmine. The orchestra was playing in the colonnade; tea had been served under the cocoa-nut palms; pretty faces and gay toilets glimmered familiarly as the chair swept alo