The Younger Set Part 9

He had another trick, too, of retiring within himself, even when smiling at her sallies or banteringly evading her challenge to a duel of wits.

At such times he no longer looked very young; she had noticed that more than once. He looked old, and ill-tempered.

Perhaps some sorrow--the actuality being vague in her mind; perhaps some hidden suffering--but she learned that he had never been wounded in battle and had never even had measles.

The sudden sullen pallor, the capricious fits of silent reserve, the smiling aloofness, she never attributed to the real source. How could she? The Incomprehensible Thing was a Finality accomplished according to law. And the woman concerned was now another man's wife. Which conclusively proved that there could be no regret arising from the Incomprehensible Finality, and that n.o.body involved cared, much less suffered. Hence _that_ was certainly not the cause of any erratic or specific phenomena exhibited by this sample of man who differed, as she had noticed, somewhat from the rank and file of his neutral-tinted brothers.

"It's this particular specimen, _per se_," she concluded; "it's himself, _sui generis_--just as I happen to have red hair. That is all."

And she rode on quite happily, content, confident of his interest and kindness. For she had never forgotten his warm response to her when she stood on the threshold of her first real dinner party, in her first real dinner gown--a trivial incident, trivial words! But they had meant more to her than any man specimen could understand--including the man who had uttered them; and the violets, which she found later with his card, must remain for her ever after the delicately fragrant symbol of all he had done for her in a solitude, the completeness of which she herself was only vaguely beginning to realise.

Thinking of this now, she thought of her brother--and the old hurt at his absence on that night throbbed again. Forgive? Yes. But how could she forget it?

"I wish you knew Gerald well," she said impulsively; "he is such a dear fellow; and I think you'd be good for him--and besides," she hastened to add, with instinctive loyalty, lest he misconstrue, "Gerald would be good for you. We were a great deal together--at one time."

He nodded, smilingly attentive.

"Of course when he went away to school it was different," she added.

"And then he went to Yale; that was four more years, you see."

"I was a Yale man," remarked Selwyn; "did he--" but he broke off abruptly, for he knew quite well that young Erroll could have made no senior society without his hearing of it. And he had not heard of it--not in the cane-brakes of Leyte where, on his sweat-soaked s.h.i.+rt, a small pin of heavy gold had clung through many a hike and many a scout and by many a camp-fire where the talk was of home and of the chances of crews and of quarter-backs.

"What were you going to ask me, Captain Selwyn?"

"Did he row--your brother Gerald?"

"No," she said. She did not add that he had broken training; that was her own sorrow, to be concealed even from Gerald. "No; he played polo sometimes. He rides beautifully, Captain Selwyn, and he is so clever when he cares to be--at the traps, for example--and--oh--anything. He once swam--oh, dear, I forget; was it five or fifteen or fifty miles? Is that _too_ far? Do people swim those distances?"

"Some of those distances," replied Selwyn.

"Well, then, Gerald swam some of those distances--and everybody was amazed... . I do wish you knew him well."

"I mean to," he said. "I must look him up at his rooms or his club or--perhaps--at Neergard & Co."

"_Will_ you do this?" she asked, so earnestly that he glanced up surprised.

"Yes," he said; and after a moment: "I'll do it to-day, I think; this afternoon."

"Have you time? You mustn't let me--"

"Time?" he repeated; "I have nothing else, except a watch to help me get rid of it."

"I'm afraid I help you get rid of it, too. I heard Nina warning the children to let you alone occasionally--and I suppose she meant that for me, too. But I only take your mornings, don't I? Nina is unreasonable; I never bother you in the afternoons or evenings; do you know I have not dined at home for nearly a month--except when we've asked people?"

"Are you having a good time?" he asked condescendingly, but without intention.

"Heavenly. How can you ask that?--with every day filled and a chance to decline something every day. If you'd only go to one--just one of the dances and teas and dinners, you'd be able to see for yourself what a good time I am having... . I don't know why I should be so delightfully lucky, but everybody asks me to dance, and every man I meet is particularly nice, and n.o.body has been very horrid to me; perhaps because I like everybody--"

She rode on beside him; they were walking their horses now; and as her silken-coated mount paced forward through the suns.h.i.+ne she sat at ease, straight as a slender Amazon in her habit, ruddy hair glistening at the nape of her neck, the scarlet of her lips always a vivid contrast to that wonderful unblemished skin of snow.

He thought to himself, quite impersonally: "She's a real beauty, that youngster. No wonder they ask her to dance and n.o.body is horrid. Men are likely enough to go quite mad about her as Nina predicts: probably some of 'em have already--that chuckle-headed youth who was there Tuesday, gulping up the tea--" And, "What was his name?" he asked aloud.

"Whose name?" she inquired, roused by his voice from smiling retrospection.

"That chuckle head--the young man who continued to haunt you so persistently when you poured tea for Nina on Tuesday. Of course they _all_ haunted you," he explained politely, as she shook her head in sign of non-comprehension; "but there was one who--ah--gulped at his cup."

"Please--you are rather dreadful, aren't you?"

"Yes. So was he; I mean the infatuated chinless gentleman whose facial ensemble remotely resembled the features of a pleased and placid lizard of the Reptilian period."

"Oh, George Fane! That is particularly disagreeable of you, Captain Selwyn, because his wife has been very nice to me--Rosamund Fane--and she spoke most cordially of you--"

"Which one was she?"

"The Dresden china one. She looks--she simply cannot look as though she were married. It's most amusing--for people always take her for somebody's youngest sister who will be out next winter... . Don't you remember seeing her?"

"No, I don't. But there were dozens coming and going every minute whom I didn't know. Still, I behaved well, didn't I?"

"Pretty badly--to Kathleen Lawn, whom you cornered so that she couldn't escape until her mother made her go without any tea."

"Was _that_ the reason that old lady looked at me so queerly?"

"Probably. I did, too, but you were taking chances, not hints... . She _is_ attractive, isn't she?"

"Very fetching," he said, leaning down to examine his stirrup leathers which he had already lengthened twice. "I've got to have c.u.mmins punch these again," he muttered; "or am I growing queer-legged in my old age?"

As he straightened up, Miss Erroll said: "Here comes Mr. Fane now--with a strikingly pretty girl. How beautifully they are mounted"--smilingly returning Fane's salute--"and she--oh! so you _do_ know her, Captain Selwyn? Who is she?"

Crop raised mechanically in dazed salute, Selwyn's light touch on the bridle had tightened to a nervous clutch which brought his horse up sharply.

"What is it?" she asked, drawing bridle in her turn and looking back into his white, stupefied face.

"Pain," he said, unconscious that he spoke. At the same instant the stunned eyes found their focus--and found her beside his stirrup, leaning wide from her seat in sweet concern, one gloved hand resting on the pommel of his saddle.

"Are you ill?" she asked; "shall we dismount? If you feel dizzy, please lean against me."

"I am all right," he said coolly; and as she recovered her seat he set his horse in motion. His face had become very red now; he looked at her, then beyond her, with all the deliberate concentration of aloof indifference.

Confused, conscious that something had happened which she did not comprehend, and sensitively aware of the preoccupation which, if it did not ignore her, accepted her presence as of no consequence, she permitted her horse to set his own pace.

Neither self-command nor self-control was lacking now in Selwyn; he simply was too self-absorbed to care what she thought--whether she thought at all. And into his consciousness, throbbing heavily under the rus.h.i.+ng reaction from shock, crowded the crude fact that Alixe was no longer an apparition evoked in sleeplessness, in sun-lit brooding; in the solitude of crowded avenues and swarming streets; she was an actual presence again in his life--she was here, bodily, unchanged--unchanged!--for he had conceived a strange idea that she must have changed physically, that her appearance had altered. He knew it was a grotesquely senseless idea, but it clung to him, and he had nursed it unconsciously.

He had, truly enough, expected to encounter her in life again--somewhere; though what he had been preparing to see, Heaven alone knew; but certainly not the supple, laughing girl he had known--that smooth, slender, dark-eyed, dainty visitor who had played at marriage with him through a troubled and unreal dream; and was gone when he awoke--so swift the brief two years had pa.s.sed, as swift in sorrow as in happiness.

Two vision-tinted years!--ended as an hour ends with the m.u.f.fled chimes of a clock, leaving the air of an empty room vibrant. Two years!--a swift, restless dream aglow with exotic colour, echoing with laughter and bugle-call and the noise of the surf on Samar rocks--a dream through which stirred the rustle of strange brocades and the whisper of breezes blowing over the gra.s.ses of Leyte; and the light, dry report of rifles, and the shuffle of bare feet in darkened bungalows, and the whisper of dawn in Manila town.

Two years!--wherever they came from, wherever they had gone. And now, out of the ghostly, shadowy memory, behold _her_ stepping into the world again!--living, breathing, quickening with the fire of life undimmed in her. And he had seen the bright colour spreading to her eyes, and the dark eyes widen to his stare; he had seen the vivid blush, the forced smile, the nod, the voiceless parting of her stiffened lips. Then she was gone, leaving the whole world peopled with her living presence and the very sky ringing with the words her lips had never uttered, never would utter while sun and moon and stars endured.

Shrinking from the clamouring tumult of his thoughts he looked around, hard-eyed and drawn of mouth, to find Miss Erroll riding a length in advance, her gaze fixed resolutely between her horse's ears.