The Firing Line Part 12

"I don't want to, Miss Cardross. Listen: n.o.body could be more sweet, more simple, more natural than the girl I spoke to--I dreamed that I talked with--last night. I don't want to forget that night, or that girl. Must I?"

"Are you, in your inmost thoughts, fastidious in thinking of that girl?

Is there any reservation, any hesitation?"

He said, meeting her eyes: "She is easily the nicest girl I ever met--the very nicest. Do you think that I might have her for a friend?"

"Do you mean this girl, Calypso?"

"Yes."

"Then I think that she will return to you the exact measure of friendship that you offer her.... Because, Mr. Hamil, she is after all not very old in years, and a little sensitive and impressionable."

He thought to himself: "She is a rather curious mixture of impulse and reason; of shyness and audacity; of composure and timidity; of courage and cowardice and experience. But there is in her no treachery; nothing mentally unwholesome."

They stood silent a moment smiling at each other rather seriously; then her smooth hand slid from his, and she drew a light breath.

"What a relief!" she said.

"What?"

"To know you are the kind of man I knew you were. That sounds rather Irish, doesn't it?..." And under her breath--"perhaps it is. G.o.d knows!"

Her face grew very grave for a moment, then, as she turned and looked at him, the shadow fell.

"Do you know--it was absurd of course--but I could scarcely sleep last night for sheer dread of your coming to-day. And yet I knew what sort of a man you must be; and this morning"--she shook her head--"I couldn't endure any breakfast, and I usually endure lots; so I took a spin down the lake in my chair. When I saw you just now I was trying to brace up on a guava. Listen to me: I am hungry!"

"You poor little thing--"

"Sympathy satisfies sentiment but appet.i.te prefers oranges. Shall we eat oranges together and become friendly and messy? Are you even _that_ kind of a man? Oh, then if you really are, there's a mixed grove just beyond."

So together, shoulder to shoulder, keeping step, they pa.s.sed through the new grove with its enormous pendent bunches of grape-fruit, and into a second grove where limes and mandarins hung among cl.u.s.ters of lemons and oranges; where k.u.m-quat bushes stood stiffly, studded with egg-shaped, orange-tinted fruit; where tangerines, grape-fruit, and king-oranges grew upon the same tree, and the deep scarlet of ripe j.a.panese persimmons and the huge tattered fronds of banana trees formed a riotous background.

"This tree!" she indicated briefly, reaching up; and her hand was white even among the milky orange bloom--he noticed that as he bent down a laden bough for her.

"Pine-oranges," she said, "the most delicious of all. I'll pick and you hold the branch. And please get me a few tangerines--those blood-tangerines up there.... Thank you; and two j.a.panese persimmons--and two more for yourself.... Have you a knife? Very well; now, break a fan from that saw-palmetto and sweep a place for me on the ground--that way. And now please look very carefully to see if there are any spiders. No spiders? No scorpions? No wood-ticks? Are you sure?"

"There _may_ be a banders.n.a.t.c.h," he said doubtfully, dusting the ground with his palmetto fan.

She laughed and seated herself on the ground, drew down her short white tennis-skirt as far as it would go over her slim ankles, looked up at him confidently, holding out her hand for his knife.

"We are going to be delightfully messy in a moment," she said; "let me show you how they prepare an orange in Florida. This is for you--you must take it.... And this is for me. The rind is all gone, you see. Now, Ulysses. This is the magic moment!"

And without further ceremony her little teeth met in the dripping golden pulp; and in another moment Hamil was imitating her.

They appeared to be sufficiently hungry; the brilliant rind, crinkling, fell away in golden corkscrews from orange after orange, and still they ate on, chattering away together between oranges.

"Isn't this primitive luxury, Mr. Hamil? We ought to wear our bathing-clothes.... Don't dare take my largest king-orange! Yes--you may have it;--I won't take it.... Are you being amused? My father said that you were to be amused. What in the world are you staring at?"

"That!" said Hamil, eyes widening. "What on earth--"

"Oh, that's nothing--that is our watchman. We have to employ somebody to watch our groves, you know, or all the negroes in Florida would be banqueting here. So we have that watchman yonder--"

"But it's a _bird_!" insisted Hamil, "a big gray, long-legged, five-foot bird with a scarlet head!"

"Of course," said the girl serenely; "it's a crane. His name is Alonzo; he's four feet high; and he's horridly savage. If you came in here without father or me or some of the workmen who know him, Alonzo would begin to dance at you, flapping his wings, every plume erect; and if you didn't run he'd attack you. That big, dagger-like bill of his is an atrocious weapon."

The crane resembled a round-shouldered, thin-legged old gentleman with his hands tucked under his coat-tails; and as he came up, tiptoeing and peering slyly at Hamil out of two bright evil-looking eyes, the girl raised her arm and threw a k.u.m-quat at him so accurately that the bird veered off with a huge hop of grieved astonishment.

"Alonzo! Go away this instant!" she commanded. And to Hamil: "He's disgustingly treacherous; he'll sidle up behind you if he can. Give me that palmetto fan."

But the bird saw her rise, and hastily retreated to the farther edge of the grove, where presently they saw him pretending to hunt snails and lizards as innocently as though premeditated human a.s.sa.s.sination was farthest from his thoughts.

There was a fountain with a coquina basin in the grove; and here they washed the orange juice from their hands and dried them on their handkerchiefs.

"Would you like to see Tommy Tiger?" she asked. "I'm taming him."

"Very much," he said politely.

"Well, he's in there somewhere," pointing to a section of bushy jungle edging the grove and around which was a high heavy fence of closely woven buffalo wire. "Here, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!" she called, in her fresh young voice that, at times, broke deliciously in a childish grace-note.

At first Hamil could see nothing in the tangle of brier and saw-palmetto, but after a while he became aware of a wild-cat, tufted ears flattenend, standing in the shadow of a striped bush and looking at him out of the greenest eyes he had ever beheld.

"Pretty Tom," said the girl caressingly. "Tommy, come and let Shiela scratch his ears."

And the lynx, disdainfully shifting its blank green gaze from Hamil, hoisted an absurd stub of a tail and began rubbing its lavishly whiskered jowl against the bush. Nearer and nearer sidled the lithe grayish animal, cautiously the girl advanced, until the cat was rubbing cheek and flank against the woven-wire fence. Then, with infinite precaution, she extended her hand, touched the flat fierce head, and slowly began to rub it.

"Don't!" said Hamil, stepping forward; and at the sound of his voice and step the cat whirled and struck, and the girl sprang back, white to the lips.

For a moment she said nothing, then looked up at Hamil beside her, as pale as she.

"I am not hurt," she said, "only startled."

"I should not have spoken," he faltered. "What an a.s.s I am!"

"It is all right; I ought to have cautioned you about moving or speaking. I thought you understood--but please don't look that way, Mr.

Hamil. It was not your fault and I am not hurt. Which teaches me a lesson, I hope. What is the moral?--don't attempt to caress the impossible?--or something similarly senseless," she added gaily. And turning on the crouching lynx: "Bad Tommy! Wicked, treacherous, _bad_--no! _Poor_ old Tom! You are quite right. I'd do the same if I were trapped and anybody tried to patronize me. I know how you feel--yes, I do, Tommy Tiger. And I'll tell old Jonas to give you lots and lots of delicious mud-fish for your dinner to-night--yes, I will, my friend. Also some lavender to roll on.... Mr. Hamil, you are still unusually colourless. Were you really afraid?"

"Horribly."

"Oh, the wire is too strong for him to break out," she observed coolly.

"I was not afraid of that," he retorted, reddening.

She turned toward him, smilingly remorseful.

"I know it! I say such things--I don't know why. You will learn how to take them, won't you?"

They walked on, pa.s.sing through grove after grove, Alonzo tiptoeing after them, and when, as a matter of precaution from time to time, Shiela looked back, the bird pretended not to see them until they pa.s.sed the last gate and locked it. Then the great crane, half flying, half running, charged at the closed gate, dancing and bounding about; and long after they were out of sight Alonzo's discordant metallic shrieks rang out in baffled fury from among the trees.