XII
He was not given much to reading, but when Martin left the cottage and stood out in the liquid silver of the moon under the vast dome which dazzled with stars, and he caught the flash of fireflies among the undergrowth that were like the lanterns of the fairies a line came into his mind that he liked and repeated several times, rather whimsically pleased with himself for having found it at exactly the right moment. It was “the witching hour of night.”
He remained on top of the incline for a little while, moved to that spirit of the realization of God which touches the souls of sensitive men when they are awed by the wonder and the beauty of the earth. He stood quite still, disembodied for the moment, uplifted, stirred, with all the scents and all the whisperings about him, humble, childlike, able, in that brief flight of ecstasy, to understand the language of another world.
And then the stillness was suddenly cut by a scream of vacuous laughter, probably that of an exuberant Irish maid-servant, to whom silences are made to break, carrying on, most likely, a rough flirtation with a chauffeur.
It brought Martin back to earth like the stick of a rocket. But he didn’t go down immediately to the water. He sat there and nursed his knees and began to think. Whether it was Howard’s unexpected talk of Plattsburg and of being made something of or not he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was suddenly filled with a sort of fright.... “Good God,” he said to himself, “time’s rushing away, and I’m nearly twenty-six. I’m as old as some men who have done things and made things and are planted on their feet. What have I done? What am I fit to do? Nearly twenty-six and I’m still playing games like a schoolboy!... What’s my father saying? ‘We count it death to falter not to die’... I’ve been faltering—and before I know anything about it I shall be thirty—half-time.... This can’t go on. This waiting for Joan is faltering. If she’s not coming to me I must go to her. If it’s not coming right it must end and I must get mended and begin again. I can’t stand in father’s shoes with all he worked to make in my hands like ripe plums. It isn’t fair, or straight. I must push up a rung and carry things on for him. Could I look him in the face having slacked? My God, I wish I’d watched the time rush by! I’m nearly twenty-six... Joan—to-morrow. That’s the thing to do.” He got up and strode quickly down to the water. “If she’s going to be my wife, that’s a good step on. And she can help me like no one but my father. And then I’ll make something of myself. If not... if not,—no faltering, Gray,—then I’ll do it alone for both their sakes.”
He chucked his sweater into the dingey, shoved it off the beach and sprang in and rowed strongly towards the yawl. Somehow he felt broader of back and harder of muscle for this summing up of things, this audit of his account. He was nearly twenty-six and nothing was done. That was the report he had to make to his conscience, that was what he had to say to the man who smiled down upon him from his place in the New York house.... Good Lord, it was about time that he pulled himself together.
The yawl was lying alone, aloof from the other small craft anchored near the pier. Her mast seemed taller and her lines more graceful silhouetted against the sky, silvered by the moon. It was indeed the witching hour of night.
He got aboard and tied up the dingey, cast a look round to see that everything was shipshape, took in a deep breath and went into the cabin. He was not tired and never felt less like sleep. His brain was clear as though a fog had risen from it, and energy beat in him like a running engine. He would light the lamp, get into his pajamas and think about to-morrow and Joan. He was mighty glad to have come to a decision.
Stooping, he lit the lamp, turned and gave a gasp of surprise.
There, curled up like a water sprite on the unmade bunk lay Tootles in bathing clothes, holding a rubber cap in her hand, her head, with its golden bobbed hair, dented into a cushion.
For a moment she pretended to be asleep, but anxiety to see how Martin was looking was too much for her. Also her clothes were wet and not very comfortable. She opened her eyes and sat up.
“My dear Tootles!” said Martin, “what’s the idea? You said you were going home to bed.” She would rather that he had been angry than amused. “It was the night,” she said, “and something in the air. I just had to bathe and swam out here. I didn’t think you’d be coming yet. I suppose you think I’m bug-house.”
“No, I don’t. If I hadn’t taken my bathing suit to the cottage to be mended I’d have a dip myself. Cigarette?” He held one out.
But she shook her head. How frightfully natural and brotherly this boy was, she thought. Was her last desperate card to be as useless as all the rest of the pack? How could it be! They might as well be on a desert island out there on the water and she the only woman on it.
“Feel a bit chilly? You’d better put on this sweater.”
She took it from him but laid it aside. “No. The air’s too warm,” she said. “Oh, ho, I’m so sleepy,” and she stretched herself out again with her hands under her head.
“I’m not,” said Martin. “I’m tremendously awake. Let’s talk if you’re not in a hurry to get back.”
“I’m very happy here,” she answered. “But must we have that lamp? It glares and makes the cabin hot.”
“The moon’s better than all the lamps,” said Martin, and put it out. He sat on his bunk and the gleam of his cigarette came and went. It was like a big firefly in the half dark cabin. “To-morrow,” he said to himself, with a tingle running through his blood, “to-morrow—and Joan.”
Tootles waited for him to speak. She might as well have been miles away for all that she affected him. He seemed to have forgotten that she was alive.
He had. And there was a long silence.
“To-morrow,—and Joan. That’s it. I’ll go over to Easthampton and take her away from that house and talk to her. This time I’ll break everything down and tell her what she means to me. I’ve never told her that.”
“He doesn’t care,” thought Tootles. “I’m no more than an old shoe to him.”
“If I’d told her it might have made a difference. Even if she had laughed at me she would have had something to catch hold of if she wanted it. By Jove, I wish I’d had the pluck to tell her.”
“He even looks at me and doesn’t see me,” she went on thinking, her hopes withering like cut flowers, her eagerness petering out and a great humiliation creeping over her. “What’s the matter with me? Some people think I’m pretty. Irene does... and last night, when I kissed him there was an answer.... Has that girl come between us again?”
And so they went on, these two, divided by a thousand miles, each absorbed in individual thought, and there was a long queer silence.
But she was there to fight, and having learned one side of men during her sordid pilgrimage and having an ally in Nature, she got up and sat down on the bunk at his side, snuggling close.
“You are cold, Tootles,” he said, and put his arm round her.
And hope revived, like a dying fire licked by a sudden breeze, and she put her bobbed head on his broad shoulder.
But he was away again, miles and miles away, thinking back, unfolding all the moments of his first companionship with Joan and looking at them wistfully to try and find some tenderness; thinking forward, with the picture of Joan’s face before him and wondering what would come into her eyes when he laid his heart bare for her gaze.
Waiting and waiting, on the steady rise and fall of his chest,—poor little starved Tootles, poor little devil,—tears began to gather, tears as hot as blood, and at last they broke and burst in an awful torrent, and she flung herself face down upon the other bunk, crying incoherently to God to let her die.
And once more the boy’s spirit, wandering high in pure air, fell like the stick of a rocket, and he sprang up and bent over the pitiful little form,—not understanding because Joan held his heart and kept it clean.
“Tootles,” he cried out. “Dear old Tootles. What is it? What’s happened?”
But there was only brotherliness in his kind touch, only the same solicitude that he had shown her all along. Nothing else. Not a thing. And she knew it, at last, definitely. This boy was too different, too much the other girl’s—curse her for having all the luck.
For an instant, for one final desperate instant, she was urged to try again, to fling aside control and restraint and with her trembling body pressed close and her eager arms clasped about his neck, pour out her love and make a passionate stammering plea for something,—just something to put into her memory, her empty loveless memory,—but suddenly, like the gleam of a lamp in a tunnel, her pride lit up, the little streak of pride which had taken her unprofaned through all her sordid life, and she sat up, choked back her sobs, and dried her face with the skirt of her bathing dress.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “It’s the night or something. It got on my nerves, I suppose, like—like the throb of an organ. I dunno. I’m all right now, anyway.” And she stood in front of him bravely, with her chin up, but her heart breaking, and her attempt to make a laugh must surely have been entered in the book of human courage.
But before Martin could say anything, she slipped into the cockpit, balanced herself on the ledge of the cabin house, said “Good night, old dear,” and waved her hand, dived into the silver water and swam strongly towards the beach.