The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 36

It was true that Peter, in his absence, had disembarked a second time on Meteor--a fit habitation for such a woman as Day Rackby. But did that old madman think that he could coop her up here forever? How far must he be taken seriously in his threat?

Peter advanced gingerly. Blue water heaved eternally all round that craggy island, clucked and jabbered in long corridors of faulted stone, while in its lacy edge winked and sparkled new sh.e.l.ls of peac.o.c.k blue, coming from the infinite treasury of the sea to join those already on deposit here.

What, then, was he about? He loved her. What was love? What, in this case, but an early and late sweetness, a wordless gift, a silent form floating soft by his side--something seeking and not saying, hoping and not proving, burning and as yet scarce daring--and so, perhaps, dying.

Then he saw her.

She lay in an angle of the cover, habited in that swimming suit she had plagued Jethro into buying, for she could swim like a dog. There, for minutes or hours, she had lain p.r.o.ne upon the sands, nostrils wide, legs and arms covered with grains of sand in black and gold glints. Staring at the transfigured flesh, she delighted in this conversion of herself into a beautiful monster.--

Suddenly the sea spoke in her blood, as the gossips had long prophesied, or something very like it. Lying with her golden head in her arms, the splendid shoulders lax, she felt a strong impulse toward the water shoot through her form from head to heel at this wet contact with the naked earth. She felt that she could vanish in the tide and swim forever.

At that moment she heard Peter's step, and sprang to her feet. She could not be mistaken. Marvelous man, in whose arms she had lain; fatal trespa.s.ser, whom her father had sworn to kill for some vileness in his nature. What could that be? Surely, there was no other man like Peter.

She interpreted his motions no less eagerly than his lips.

The sun sank while they stared at each other. Flakes of purple darkness seemed to scale away from the side of the crag whose crest still glowed faintly red. It would be night here shortly. Deep-water Peter gave a great sigh, fumbled with his package, and next the string of pearls swayed from his finger.

"Yours," he uttered, holding them toward her.

Silence intervened. A slaty cloud raised its head in the east, and against that her siren's face was pale. Her blue eyes burned on the gems with a strange and haunted light. There was wickedness here, she mistrusted, but how could it touch her?

Peter came toward her, bent over her softly as that shadow in whose violet folds they were wrapped deeper moment by moment. His fingers trembled at the back of her neck and could not find the clasp. Her damp body held motionless as stone under his attempt.

"It is done," he cried, hoa.r.s.ely.

She sprang free of him on the instant.

"Is this all my thanks?" Peter muttered.

She stooped mischievously and dropped a handful of sh.e.l.ls deftly on the sand, one by one. Peter, stooping, read what was written there; he cried for joy, and crushed her in his arms, as little Rackby had crushed her mother, once, under the Preaching Tree.

A strong shudder went through her. The yellow hair whipped about her neck. Then for one instant he saw her eyes go past him and fix themselves high up at the top of that crag. Peter loosened his hold with a cry almost of terror at the light in those eyes. He thought he had seen Cad Sills staring at him.

There was no time to verify such notions. Day Rackby had seen Jethro on his knees, imploring her, voicelessly, with his mysterious right reason, which said, plainer than words, that the touch of Peter's lips was poison to her soul. It seemed to Jethro in that moment that a ringing cry burst from those dumb lips, but perhaps it was one of the voices of the surf. The girl's arms were lifted toward him; she whirled, thrust Peter back, and fled over soft and treacherous ha.s.socks of the purple weed. In another instant she flashed into the dying light on the sea beyond the headland, poised.

The weed lifted and fell, seething, but the cry, even if the old man had heard it once, was not repeated.

GREEN GARDENS[13]

By FRANCES NOYES HART

(From _Scribner's Magazine_)

Daphne was singing to herself when she came through the painted gate in the back wall. She was singing partly because it was June, and Devon, and she was seventeen, and partly because she had caught a breath-taking glimpse of herself in the long mirror as she had flashed through the hall at home, and it seemed almost too good to be true that the radiant small person in the green muslin frock with the wreath of golden hair bound about her head, and the sea-blue eyes laughing back at her, was really Miss Daphne Chiltern. Incredible, incredible luck to look like that, half Dryad, half Kate Greenaway--she danced down the turf path to the herb-garden, swinging her great wicker basket and singing like a small mad thing.

"He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon,"

carolled Daphne, all her own ribbons flying,

"He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon, He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon To tie up--"

The song stopped as abruptly as though some one had struck it from her lips. A strange man was kneeling by the beehive in the herb-garden. He was looking at her over his shoulder, at once startled and amused, and she saw that he was wearing a rather shabby tweed suit and that his face was oddly brown against his close-cropped, tawny hair. He smiled, his teeth a strong flash of white.

"h.e.l.lo!" he greeted her, in a tone at once casual and friendly.

Daphne returned the smile uncertainly. "h.e.l.lo," she replied gravely.

The strange man rose easily to his feet, and she saw that he was very tall and carried his head rather splendidly, like the young bronze Greek in Uncle Roland's study at home. But his eyes--his eyes were strange--quite dark and burned out. The rest of him looked young and vivid and adventurous--but his eyes looked as though the adventure were over, though they were still questing.

"Were you looking for any one?" she asked, and the man shook his head, laughing.

"No one in particular, unless it was you."

Daphne's soft brow darkened. "It couldn't possibly have been me," she said in a rather stately small voice, "because, you see, I don't know you. Perhaps you didn't know that there is no one living in Green Gardens now?"

"Oh, yes, I knew. The Fanes have left for Ceylon, haven't they?"

"Sir Harry left two weeks ago, because he had to see the old governor before he sailed, but Lady Audrey only left last week. She had to close the London house, too, so there was a great deal to do."

"I see. And so Green Gardens is deserted?"

"It is sold," said Daphne, with a small quaver in her voice, "just this afternoon. I came over to say good-by to it, and to get some mint and lavender from the garden."

"Sold?" repeated the man, and there was an agony of incredulity in the stunned whisper. He flung out his arm against the sun-warmed bricks of the high wall as though to hold off some invader. "No, no; they'd never dare to sell it."

"I'm glad you mind so much," said Daphne softly. "It's strange that n.o.body minds but us, isn't it? I cried at first--and then I thought that it would be happier if it wasn't lonely and empty, poor dear--and then, it was such a beautiful day, that I forgot to be unhappy."

The man bestowed a wretched smile on her. "You hardly conveyed the impression of unrelieved gloom as you came around that corner," he a.s.sured her.

"I--I haven't a very good memory for being unhappy," Daphne confessed remorsefully, a lovely and guilty rose staining her to her brow at the memory of that exultant chant.

He threw back his head with a sudden shout of laughter.

"These are glad tidings! I'd rather find a pagan than a Puritan at Green Gardens any day. Let's both have a poor memory. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"No," she replied, "but do you mind if I ask you what you are doing here?"

"Not a bit." He lit the stubby brown pipe, curving his hand dexterously to shelter it from the little breeze. He had the most beautiful hands that she had ever seen, slim and brown and fine--they looked as though they would be miraculously strong--and miraculously gentle. "I came to see--I came to see whether there was 'honey still for tea,' Mistress Dryad!"

"Honey--for tea?" she echoed wonderingly; "was that why you were looking at the hive?"

He puffed meditatively, "Well--partly. It's a quotation from a poem.

Ever read Rupert Brooke?"

"Oh, yes, yes." Her voice tripped in its eagerness. "I know one by heart--