The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 5

Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were la.s.situde and a glance aside at false G.o.ds.

Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself, would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else she must pa.s.s him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her own and her mother's ambitions.

But Fitz wanted her so much that he felt he must die if he lost her. And sometimes he was tempted to tell her of his millions and take her for better or worse. But he would never know then if she cared for him or not; he would never know then if she had a real heart and was worth the having. So he resisted, and his young face had, at times, a grim, careworn look; and between hope and fear his spirits fell away and he felt tired and old. People thought of him as an absurd boy in the most desperate throes of puppy love, and certain ones felt grateful to Eve Burton for showing them so pretty a bit of sport. Even those very agreeable people, the Carrols, were disgusted with Fitz, as are all good people when a guest of the house makes a solemn goose of himself.

But Fitz was not in the least ridiculous to himself, which was important; and he was not ridiculous to Eve, which was more important still.

Then, one morning, the whole affair began to look serious even to a scoffing and cynical world. Darius O'Connell was missed at the Casino and in the Reading-room; the evening papers announced that he had sailed for Europe. And Miss Burton, far from appearing anxious or unhappy about this, had never looked so beautiful or so serene. Some said that O'Connell had made up his mind that the game was not worth the candle; others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty life with its last hopes melting away. Eve--her Eve--her beautiful daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then collapsed, bitter, broken, and old.

But what looked even more serious than O'Connell's removing himself was the fact that during the match which was to decide the lawn-tennis championship Eve and her bank clerk did not appear in the Casino grounds. Here were met all the happy people, in society and all the unhappy people--even Mrs. Burton's ashen face was noted among those present--but the reigning belle and her young man were not in the seats that they had occupied during the preceding days of the tournament; and people pointed out those empty seats to each other, and smiled and lifted their eyebrows; and young Tombs, who had been making furious love to one of the Blackwell twins--for the third tournament in five years--sighed and whispered to her: "Dolly, did you ever in your life see two empty seats sitting so close to each other?"

Meanwhile, Fitz and the beauty were strolling along the Cliff Walk in the bright sunshine, with the cool Atlantic breeze in their faces, between lawns and gardens on the one side and dancing blue waves upon the other. Fitz looked pale and careworn. But Eve looked ecstatic. This was because poor Fitz, on the one hand, was still in the misery of doubt and uncertainty, and because Eve, on the other, had suddenly made up her mind and knew almost exactly what was going to happen.

The Cliff Walk belongs to the public, and here and there meanders irritatingly over some very exclusive millionaire's front lawn. A few such, unable to endure the sight of strangers, have caused this walk, where it crosses their properties, to be sunk so that from the windows of their houses neither the walk itself nor persons walking upon it can be seen.

Fitz and the beauty were approaching one of these "ha-ha's" into which the path dipped steeply and from which it rose steeply upon the farther side. On the left was a blank wall of granite blocks, on the right only a few thousand miles of blind ocean. It may have been a distant view of this particular "ha-ha" that had made up Eve's mind for her, for she had a strong dramatic sense. Or it may have been that her heart alone had made up her mind, and that the secluded depths of the "ha-ha" had nothing to do with the matter.

"Jim," she said as they began to descend into the place, "life's only a moment out of eternity, isn't it?"

"Only a moment, Eve," he said, "a little longer for some than for others."

"If it's only a moment," she said as they reached the bottom of the decline, and could only be seen by the blind granite wall and the blind ocean, "I think it ought to be complete."

"Why, Eve!" he said, his voice breaking and choking. "Honestly?... My Eve!... Mine!... Look at me.... Is it true?... Are you sure?... Why, she's sure!... My darling's sure ... all sure."

Later he said: "And you don't care about money, and you've got the biggest, sweetest heart in all the world. And it's mine, and mine's yours."

"I can't seem to see anything in any direction," she said, "beyond you."

Later they had to separate, only to meet again at a dinner. Before they went in they had a word together in a corner.

"I _told_ you," said Fitz, "that my father would understand, and you said he wouldn't. But he did; his answer came while I was dressing. I telegraphed: 'I have seen the world,' and the answer was: 'Put a fence around it.'"

She smiled with delight.

"Eve," he said, "everybody knows that you've taken me. It's in our faces, I suppose. And they are saying that you are a goose to throw yourself away on a bank clerk."

"Do you think I care?" she said.

"I know you don't," he said, "but I can't help thanking you for holding your head so high and looking so happy and so proud."

"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything, you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make poverty look like paradise?"

"I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a spread eagle."

"Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor mamma."

"Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell her that it isn't gla.s.s."

Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of it almost took her breath away.

Dinner was announced.

"I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?"

"My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered.

"I don't believe I do," she said.

"You don't," said he.

An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time.

The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become pop-eyed from looking at it.

Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs:

"That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied."

But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music."

Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope.

But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American phrase, was one of those who "also ran."

Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but, thank G.o.d, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve and Fitz never knew just what he meant.

They spent part of their honeymoon in Cleveland, and every afternoon Eve sat between Fitz and his father, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, and was taught painstakingly, as the crowning gift of those two simple hearts, to play the game.

There must be one word more. There are people to this day who say that Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind, and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth.

TARGETS

"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance, presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements, what cla.s.s of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in s.p.a.ce somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was wrecked--"

"Coast of Java--in '80, wasn't it?" said Pedder, who has read nothing but dictionaries and books of black-and-white facts and statistics in the course of a long life otherwise entirely devoted to misdirected efforts to defeat Colonel Bogey at golf.

"It was," said Gardiner, "and the lightning was very busy striking. It drowned off every member of the crew who had any sense of decency; and of the deaf and dumb pa.s.sengers selected to be washed ash.o.r.e a pair who were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast, dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which they left it."

"Why inhuman?" asked Ludlow.