The Firing Line Part 26

Will you come again soon?"

He said he would and took his leave of them in the long corridor, traversing it without noticing which direction he took until, awaking from abstraction, he found himself at the head of a flight of steps and saw the portico of the railroad station below him and the signal lamps, green and red and white, burning between the glistening rails.

Without much caring where he went, but not desiring to retrace his steps over half a mile or so of carpet, he went out into the open air and along the picket fence toward the lake front.

As he came to the track crossing he glanced across at the Beach Club where lights sparkled discreetly amid a tropical thicket and flowers lay in pale carpets under the stars.

Portlaw had sent him a member's card; he took it out now and scanned it with faint curiosity. His name was written on the round-cornered brown card signed by a "vice-president" and a "secretary," under the engraved notice: "To be shown when requested."

But when he ascended the winding walk among the palms and orange blossoms, this "suicide's tag," as Malcourt called it, was not demanded of him at the door.

The restaurant seemed to be gay and rather noisy, the women vivacious, sometimes beautiful, and often respectable. A reek of cigarette smoke, wine, and orange blossoms hung about the corridors; the tiny glittering rotunda with its gaming-tables in a circle was thronged.

He watched them lose and win and lose again. Under the soft tumult of voices the cool tones of the house attaches sounded monotonously, the ball rattled, the wheels spun. But curiosity had already died out within him; gain, loss, chance, Fate--and the tense white concentration of the man beside him no longer interested him; nor did a sweet-faced young girl in the corridor who looked a second too long at him; nor the handsome over-flushed youth who was with her and who cried out in loud recognition: "Gad, Hamil; why didn't you tell me you were coming?

There's somebody here who wants to meet you, but Portlaw's got her--somewhere. You'll take supper with us anyway! We'll find you a fair impenitent."

Hamil stared at him coolly. He was on no such terms with Malcourt, drunk or sober. But everybody was Malcourt's friend just then, and he went on recklessly:

"You've got to stay; hasn't he, Dolly?--Oh, I forgot--Miss Wilming, Mr.

Hamil, who's doing the new park, you know. All kinds of genius buzzes in his head--roulette wheels buzz in mine. Hamil, you remember Miss Wilming in the 'Motor Girl.' She was one of the acetylenes. Come on; we'll all light up later. Make him come, Dolly."

Hamil turned to speak to her. She seemed to be, at a casual glance, the sort of young girl who usually has a mother somewhere within ear-shot.

Upon inspection, however, her bright hair was a little too perfectly rippled, and her mouth a trifle fuller and redder than a normal circulation might account for. But there remained in the eyes something as yet unquenched. And looking at her, he felt a sense of impatience and regret that the delicate youth of her should be wasted in the flare and shadow of the lesser world--burning to a spectre here on the crumbling edge of things--here with Malcourt leering at her through the disordered brilliancy of that false dawn which heralds only night.

They spoke together, smilingly formal. He had quietly turned his back on Malcourt.

She hoped he would remain and join them; and her as yet unspoiled voice clashed with her tinted lips and hair.

He was sorry--politely so--thanking her with the natural and unconscious gentleness so agreeable to all women. And as in his manner there was not the slightest hint of that half-amused, half-cynical freedom characteristic of the worldly wise whom she was now accustoming herself to meet, she looked up at him with a faint flush of appreciation.

Malcourt all the while was pulling Hamil by the elbow and talking on at random almost boisterously, checking himself at intervals to exchange familiar greetings with new-comers pa.s.sing the crowded corridor. His face was puffy and red; so were his lips; and there seemed to be a shiny quality to hair and skin prophetic of future coa.r.s.ening toward a type, individuals of which swarmed like sleek flies around the gaming-tables beyond.

As Hamil glanced from the young girl to Malcourt, who was still noisily importuning him, a sudden contempt for the man arose within him. So unreasoningly abrupt was the sensation of absolute distrust and dislike that it cut his leave-taking to a curt word of refusal, and he turned on his heel.

"What's the matter with you? Aren't you coming with us?" asked Malcourt, reddening.

"No," said Hamil. "Good-bye, Miss Wilming. Thank you for asking me."

She held out her hand, uncertainly; he took it with a manner so gentle and considerate that she ventured, hesitatingly, something about seeing him again. To which he replied, pleasantly conventional, and started toward the door.

"See here, Hamil," said Malcourt sharply, "is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate rudeness to me?"

"Is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate familiarity with me?" retorted Hamil in a low voice. "You're drunk!"

Malcourt's visage crimsoned: "O h.e.l.l!" he said, "if your morals are as lofty as your mincing manners--"

Hamil stared him into silence, hesitated, then pa.s.sed in front of him and out of the door.

Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl's arm: "Take it from me, Dolly, that's the sort of citizen who'll sneak around to call on your sort Sat.u.r.day evenings."

She flushed painfully, but said nothing. "As for me," added Malcourt, "I don't think I've quite finished with this nice young man."

But Dolly Wilming stood silent, head bent, slender fingers worrying her lips, which seemed inclined to quiver.

CHAPTER X

TERRA INCOGNITA

The camp-wagon and led horses left before daylight with two of the Cracker guides, Bulow and Carter; but it was an hour after sunrise when Cardross, senior, Gray, Shiela, Hamil, and the head guide, Eudo Stent, rode out of the _patio_ into the dewy beauty of a February morning.

The lagoon was pink; so was the white town on its western sh.o.r.e; in the east, ocean and sky were one vast rosy-rayed glory. Few birds sang.

Through the intense stillness of early morning the little cavalcade made a startling clatter on the sh.e.l.l highway; but the rattle of hoofs was soon deadened in the sand of a broad country road curving south through dune and hammock along the lake sh.o.r.e.

Dew still dropped in great splashes from pine and palm; dew powdered the sparkle-berry bushes and lay like a tiny lake of quicksilver in the hollow of every broad palmetto frond; and all around them earth and gra.s.s and shrub exhaled the scented freshness of a dew-washed world.

On the still surface of the lake, tinted with palest rose and primrose, the wild ducks floated, darkly silhouetted against the water or, hoping for crumbs, paddled sh.o.r.eward, inquiringly peering up at the riders with little eyes of brightest gold.

"Blue-bills," said Cardross to Hamil; "n.o.body shoots them on the lake; they're as tame as barnyard waterfowl. Yet, the instant these same ducks leave this lagoon where they know they're protected they become as wild and wary and as difficult to get a shot at as any other wild-fowl."

Shiela, riding ahead with Gray, tossed bits of bread into the water; and the little blue-bill ducks came swimming in scores, keeping up with the horses so fearlessly and persistently that the girl turned in her saddle and looked back at her father in delight.

"I'm certainly as gifted as the Pied Piper, dad! If they follow me to Ruffle Lake I won't permit a shot to be fired."

While she spoke she kept her eyes on her father. Except for a brief good morning at breakfast she had neither looked at nor spoken to Hamil, making no noticeable effort to avoid him, but succeeded in doing it nevertheless.

Like her father and brother and Hamil she was mounted on an unornamental but wiry Tallaha.s.see horse; and she rode cross-saddle, wearing knee-coat and kilts of kahkee and brown leather puttees strapped from under the kneecap to the ankle. Like the others, too, she carried a small shotgun in a saddle boot, and in the web loops across her breast glimmered the metal rims of a dozen cartridges. A brilliant handkerchief knotted loosely around her bare white throat, and a broad Panama turned up in front and resolutely pulled down behind to defy sunstroke, completed a most bewilderingly charming picture, which moved even her father to admiring comment.

"Only," he added, "look before you step over a log when you're afoot.

The fangs of a big diamond-back are three-quarters of an inch long, my dear, and they'll go through leather as a needle goes through cambric."

"Thanks, dad--and here endeth the usual lesson."

Cardross said to Hamil: "One scarcely knows what to think about the snakes here. The records of the entire Union show few deaths in a year, and yet there's no scarcity of rattlers, copperheads, and moccasins in this Republic of ours. I know a man, an ornithologist, who for twelve years has wandered about the Florida woods and never saw a rattler. And yet, the other night a Northern man, a cottager, lighted his cigar after dinner and stepped off his veranda on to a rattler."

"Was he bitten?"

"Yes. He died in two hours." Cardross shrugged and gathered up his bridle. "Personally I have no fear; leggings won't help much; besides, a good-sized snake can strike one's hand as it swings; but our cracker guides go everywhere in thin cotton trousers and the Seminoles are barelegged. One hears often enough of escapes, yet very rarely of anybody being bitten. One of my grove guards was struck by a moccasin last winter. He was an awfully sick n.i.g.g.e.r for a while, but he got over it."

"That's cheerful," said Hamil, laughing.

"Oh, you might as well know. There are plenty of wiseacres who'll tell you that n.o.body's in danger at these East Coast resorts, and the hotel people will swear solemnly there isn't a serpent in the State; but there are, Hamil, and plenty of them. I've seen rattlers strike without rattling; and moccasins are ugly brutes that won't get out of the way for you and that give no warning when they strike; and all quail hunters in the flat-woods know how their pointers and setters are killed, and every farmer knows that the best watchmen he can have is a flock of guinea-fowl or turkeys or a few hogs loose. The _fact_ is that deadly snakes are not rare in many localities; the _wonder_ is that scarcely a death is reported in a year. How many n.i.g.g.e.rs die, I don't know; but I know enough, when I'm in the woods or fields, to look every time before I put my foot upon the ground."

"How can you see in the jungle?"