The Firing Line Part 46

"Not very much."

Virginia seemed to have lost all spirit. She laughed rarely, nowadays.

She was paler, too, than usual--paler than was ornamental; and pallor suited her rather fragile features, too. Also she had become curiously considerate of other people's feelings--rather subdued; less ready in her criticisms; gentler in judgments. All of which symptoms Constance had already noted with incredulity and alarm.

"Where did you and Louis Malcourt go this afternoon?" she asked, unpegging her hair.

"Out to the beach. There was nothing there except sky and water, and a filthy eagle dining on a dead fish."

Miss Palliser waited, sitting before her dresser; but as Virginia offered no further information she shook out the splendid ma.s.ses of her chestnut hair and, leaning forward, examined her features in the mirror with minute attention.

"It's strange," she murmured, half to herself, "how ill Jim Wayward has been looking recently. I can't account for it."

"I can, dear," said Virginia gently.

Constance turned in surprise.

"How?"

"Mr. Malcourt says that he is practising self-denial. It hurts, you know."

"What!" exclaimed Constance, flus.h.i.+ng up.

"I said that it hurts."

"Such a slur as that harms Louis Malcourt--not Mr. Wayward!" returned Constance hotly.

Virginia repeated: "It hurts--to kill desire. It hurts even before habit is acquired ... they say. Louis Malcourt says so. And if that is true--can you wonder that poor Mr. Wayward looks like death? I speak in all sympathy and kindness--as did Mr. Malcourt."

So _that_ was it! Constance stared at her own fair face in the mirror, and deep into the pained brown eyes reflected there. The eyes suddenly dimmed and the parted mouth quivered.

So that was the dreadful trouble!--the explanation of the recent change in him--the deep lines of pain from the wing of the pinched nostril--the haunted gaze, the long, restless silences, the forced humour and its bitter flavour tainting voice and word!

And she had believed--feared with a certainty almost hopeless--that it was his old vice, slowly, inexorably transforming what was left of the man she had known so long and cared for so loyally through all these strange, confusing years.

From the mirror the oval of her own fresh unravaged face, framed in the burnished brown of her hair, confronted her like a wraith of the past; and, dreaming there, wide-eyed, expressionless, she seemed to see again the old-time parlour set with rosewood; and the faded roses in the carpet; and, through the half-drawn curtains, spring sunlight falling on a boy and a little girl.

Virginia, partly dressed for dinner, rose and went to the window, frail restless hands clasped behind her back, and stood there gazing out at the fading daylight. Perhaps the close of day made her melancholy; for there were traces of tears on her lashes; perhaps it suggested the approaching end of a dream so bright and strange that, at times, a dull pang of dread stilled her heart--checking for a moment its heavy beating.

Light died in the room; the panes turned silvery, then darker as the swift Southern night fell over sea, lagoon, and forest.

Far away in the wastes of dune and jungle the sweet flute-like tremolo of an owl broke out, prolonged infinitely. From the dark garden below, a widow-bird called breathlessly, its ghostly cry, now a far whisper in the night, now close at hand, husky, hurried, startling amid the shadows. And, whir! whir-r-r! thud! came the great soft night-moths against the window screens where sprays of silvery jasmine clung, perfuming all the night.

Still Constance sat before the mirror which was now invisible in the dusk, bare elbows on the dresser's edge, face framed in her hands over which the thick hair rippled. And, in the darkness, her brown eyes closed--perhaps that they might behold more clearly the phantoms of the past together there in an old-time parlour, where the golden radiance of suns long dead still lingered, warming the faded roses on the floor.

And after a long while her maid came with a card; and she straightened up in her chair, gathered the filmy robe of lace, and, rising, pressed the electric switch. But Virginia had returned to her own room to bathe her eyelids and pace the floor until she cared to face the outer world once more and, for another hour or two, deceive it.

CHAPTER XV

UNDER FIRE

Meanwhile Constance dressed hastily, abetted by the clever maid; for Wayward was below, invited to dine with them. Malcourt also was due for dinner, and, as usual, late.

In fact, he was at that moment leisurely tying his white neckwear in his bed-chamber at Villa Cardross. And sometimes he whistled, tentatively, as though absorbed in mentally following an elusive air; sometimes he resumed a lighted cigarette which lay across the gilded stomach of a Chinese joss, sending a thin, high thread of smoke to the ceiling. He had begun his collection with one small idol; there were now nineteen, and all hideous.

"The deuce! the deuce!" he murmured, rejecting the tie and trying another one; "and all the things I've got to do this blessed night!...

Console the afflicted--three of them; dine with one, get to "The Breakers" and spoon with another--get to the Club and sup with another!--the deuce! the deuce! the--"

He hummed a bar or two of a new waltz, took a puff at his cigarette, winked affably at the idol, put on his coat, and without a second glance at the gla.s.s went out whistling a lively tune.

Hamil, dressed for dinner, but looking rather worn and fatigued, pa.s.sed him in the hall.

"You've evidently had a hard day," said Malcourt; "you resemble the last run of sea-weed. Is everybody dining at this hour?"

"I dined early with Mrs. Cardross. Mrs. Carrick has taken s.h.i.+ela and Cecile to that dinner dance at the O'Haras'. It's the last of the season. I thought you might be going later."

"Are you?"

"No; I'm rather tired."

"I'm tired, too. Hang it! I'm always tired--but only of Bibi. Quand meme! Good night.... I'll probably reappear with the d.i.c.ky-birds. Leave your key under that yellow rose-bush, will you? I can't stop to hunt up mine. And tell them not to bar and chain the door; that's a good fellow."

Hamil nodded and resumed his journey to his bedroom. There he transferred a disorderly heap of letters, plans, contracts, and blue-prints from his bed to a table, threw a travelling rug over the bed, lay down on it, and lighted a cigar, closing his eyes for a moment.

Then he opened them wearily.

He did not intend to sleep; there was work waiting for him; that was why he left the electric bulbs burning as safeguard against slumber.

For a while he smoked, flat on his back; his cigar went out twice and he relighted it. The third time he was deciding whether or not to set fire to it again--he remembered that--and remembered nothing more, except the haunted dreams in which he followed _her_, through sad and endless forests, gray in deepening twilight, where he could neither see her face nor reach her side, nor utter the cry which strained in his throat....

On, on, endlessly struggling onward in the thickening darkness, year after year, the sky a lowering horror, the forest, no longer silent, a twisting, stupefying confusion of sound, growing, increasing, breaking into a h.e.l.lish clamour!--

Upright on his bed he realised that somebody was knocking; and he slid to the floor, still stupid and scarcely convinced.

"Mrs. Carrick's compliments, and is Mr. Hamil quite well bein' as the lights is burnin' an' past two o'clock, sir?" said the maid at the door.

"Past _two_! O Lord! Please thank Mrs. Carrick, and say that I am going to do a little work, and that I am perfectly well."

He closed the door and looked around him in despair: "All that stuff to verify and O.K.! What an infernal a.s.s I am! By the nineteen little josses in Malcourt's bedroom I'm so many kinds of a fool that I hate to count up beyond the dozen!"

Stretching and yawning alternately he eyed the ma.s.s of papers with increasing repugnance; but later a cold sponge across his eyes revived him sufficiently to sit down and inspect the first doc.u.ment. Then he opened the ink-well, picked up a pen, and began.

For half an hour he sat there, now refreshed and keenly absorbed in his work. Once the stairs outside creaked, and he raised his head, listening absently, then returned to the task before him with a sigh.

All his windows were open; the warm night air was saturated with the odour of Bermuda lilies. Once or twice he laid down his pen and stared out into the darkness as a subtler perfume grew on the breeze--the far fragrance of china-berry in bloom; Calypso's breath!

Then, in the silence, the heavy throb of his heart unnerved his hand, rendering his pen unsteady as he signed each rendered bill: "O.K. for $----," and affixed his signature, "John Garret Hamil, Architect."