The Firing Line Part 49

"Is it?"

"I'm not sure; once I thought it was--you; the fragrance of your hair and breath--Calypso."

"When did you think that?"

"Our first night together."

She said: "I think this is our last."

He stood for a while, motionless; slowly raised his head and looked straight into her eyes; took her in his arms; holding her loosely.

White of cheek and lip, rigid, her eyes met his in breathless suspense.

Fear widened them; her hands tightened on his wrists behind her.

"Will you love me?"

"No!" she gasped.

"Is there no chance?"

"No!"

Her heart was running riot; every pulse in rebellion. A cloud possessed her senses, through which her eyes fought desperately for sight.

"Give me a memory--to carry through the years," he said unsteadily.

"No."

"Not one?"

"No!"

"To help us endure?"

Suddenly she turned in his arms, covering her eyes with both hands.

"Take--what--you wish--" she panted.

He touched one slim rigid finger after another, but they clung fast to the pallid face. Time and s.p.a.ce reeled through silence. Then slowly, lids still sealed with desperate white hands, her head sank backward.

Untaught, her lips yielded coldly; but the body, stunned, swayed toward him as he released her; and, his arm supporting her, they turned blindly toward the path. Without power, without will, pa.s.sive, dependent on his strength, her trembling knees almost failed her. She seemed unconscious of his lips on her cheek, on her hair--of her cold hands crushed in his, of the words he uttered--senseless, broken phrases, questions to which her silence answered and her closed lids acquiesced. If love was what he was asking for, why did he ask? He had his will of her lips, her hair, her slim fragrant hands; and now of her tears--for the lashes were wet and the mouth trembled. Her mind was slowly awaking to pain.

With it, far within her in unknown depths, something else stirred, stilling her swelling heart. Then every vein in her grew warm; and the quick tears sprang to her eyes.

"Dearest--dearest--" he whispered. Through the dim star-pallor she turned toward him, halted, pa.s.sing her finger-tips across her lashes.

"After all," she said, "it was too late. If there is any sin in loving you it happened long ago--not to-night.... It began from the--the beginning. Does the touch of your lips make me any worse?... But I am not afraid--if you wish it--now that I know I always loved you."

"Shiela! Shiela, little sweetheart--"

"I love you so--I love you so," she said. "I cannot help it any more than I could in dreams--any more than I could when we met in the sea and the fog.... Should I lie to myself and you? I know I can never have you for mine; I know--I know. But if you will be near me when you can--if you will only be near--sometimes--"

She pressed both his hands close between hers.

"Dear--can you give up your freedom for a girl you cannot have?"

"I did so long since."

She bent and laid her lips on his hands, gravely.

"I must say something--that disturbs me a little. May I? Then, there are perils--warnings--veiled hints.... They mean nothing definite to me....

Should I be wiser?... It is difficult to say--senseless--showing my ignorance, but I thought if there were perils that I should know about--that could possibly concern me, now, you would tell me, somehow--in time--"

For a moment the revelation of her faith and innocence--the disclosure of how strange and lost she felt in the overwhelming catastrophe of forbidden love--how ignorant, how alone, left him without a word to utter.

She said, still looking down at his hands held between her own:

"A girl who has done what I have done, loses her bearings.... I don't know yet how desperately bad I am. However, one thing remains clear--only one--that no harm could come to--my family--even if I have given myself to you. And when I did it, only the cowardly idea that I was wronging myself persisted. If that is my only sin--you are worth it.

And if I committed worse--I am not repentant. But--dear, what you have done to me has so utterly changed me that--things that I never before heeded or comprehended trouble me. Yesterday I could not have understood what to-night I have done. So, if there lies any unknown peril in to-morrow, or the days to come--if you love me you will tell me.... Yet I cannot believe in it. Dearly as I love you I would not raise one finger to comfort you at _their_ expense. I would not go away with you; I would not seek my freedom for your sake. If there is in my love anything base or selfish I am not conscious of it. I cannot marry you; I can only live on, loving you. What danger can there be in that for you and me?"

"None," he said.

She sighed happily, lifted her eyes, yielded to his arms, sighing her heart out, lips against his.

Somewhere in the forest a bird awoke singing like a soul in Paradise.

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 rec.u.mbent 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 pa.s.ses; 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 pa.s.ses 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 gla.s.sy-still lagoon; great, c.u.mbersome, 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-gra.s.s seas; and all the little striped pigs run, bucking madly, to their dangerous and silent dam who listens, rigid, h.o.r.n.y 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 ca.s.sava 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.