The Bent Twig Part 24

Arnold stood up, reached under his chair, and pulled out a tennis racquet. "Excuse me, Morrison, won't you, if I run along?" he said.

"It's not because you've come. I want a set of tennis before dinner if I can find somebody to play with me. Here, Molly, you've got your tennis shoes on already. Come along."

The little beauty shook her head violently. "No ... goodness no! It's too hot. And anyhow, I don't ever want to play again, since I've seen Sylvia's game." She turned to the other girl, breathing quickly.

"_You_ go, Sylvia dear. _I'll_ make Mr. Morrison's tea for him."

Sylvia hesitated a barely perceptible instant, until she saw old Mr.

Sommerville's eyes fixed speculatively on her. Then she stood up with an instant, cheerful alacrity. "That's _awfully_ good of you, Molly darling! _You_ won't mind, will you, Mr. Morrison!" She nodded brightly to the old gentleman, to the girl who had slipped into her place, to the other man, and was off.

The man she had left looked after her, as she trod with her long, light step beside the young man, and murmured, "_Et vera incessu patuit dea._"

Molly moved a plate on the table with some vehemence. "I suppose Sylvia would understand that language."

"She would, my dear Molly, and what's more, she would scorn me for using such a hackneyed quotation." To Mr. Sommerville he added, laughing, "Isn't it the quaintest combination--such radiant girlhood and her absurd book-learning!"

Mr. Sommerville gave his a.s.sent to the quaintness by silence, as he rose and prepared to retreat.

"_Good_-bye, Grandfather," said Molly with enthusiasm.

As they walked along, Arnold was saying to Sylvia with a listless appreciation: "You certainly know the last word of the game, don't you, Sylvia? I bet Morrison hasn't had a jolt like that for years."

"What are you _talking_ about?" asked Sylvia, perhaps slightly overdoing her ignorance of his meaning.

"Why, it's a new thing for _him_, let me tell you, to have a girl jump up as soon as he comes in and delightedly leave him to another girl.

And then to thank the other girl for being willing to take him off your hands,--that's more than knowing the rules,--that's art!" He laughed faintly at the recollection. "It's a new one for Morrison to meet a girl who doesn't kowtow. He's a very great personage in his line, and he can't help knowing it. The very last word on Lord-knows-what-all in the art business is what one Felix Morrison says about it. He's an eight-cylinder fascinator too, into the bargain. Mostly he makes me sore, but when I think about him straight, I wonder how he manages to keep on being as decent as he is--he's really a good enough sort!--with all the high-powered petticoats in New York burning incense. It's enough to turn the head of a hydrant.

That's the hold Madrina has on him. She doesn't burn any incense. She wants all the incense there is being burned, for herself; and it keeps old Felix down in his place--keeps him hanging around too. You stick to the same method if you want to make a go of it."

"I thought he wrote. I thought he did aesthetic criticisms and essays," said Sylvia, laughing aloud at Arnold's quaint advice.

"Oh, he does. I guess he's chief medicine-man in his tribe all right.

It's not only women who kowtow; when old man Merriman wants to know for sure whether to pay a million for a cracked Chinese vase, he always calls in Felix Morrison. Chief adviser to the predatory rich, that's one of his jobs! So you see," he came back to his first point, "it must be some jolt for the sacred F.M. to have a young lady, _just a young lady_, refuse to bow at the shrine. You couldn't have done a smarter trick, by heck! I've been watching you all those weeks, just too tickled for words. And I've been watching Morrison. It's been as good as a play! He can't stick it out much longer, unless I miss my guess, and I've known him ever since I was a kid. He's just waiting for a good chance to turn on the faucet and hand you a full cup of his irresistible fascination." He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and down on the tense catgut of his racquet: "What all you girls see in that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over! It gets me!"

"Why in the world 'wolf-hound'?" asked Sylvia.

"Oh, just as to his looks. He has that sort of tired, dignified, deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes would be phosph.o.r.escent at night too. They are that kind; don't you know, when you strike a match in the evening, how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look so soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards--no, Lord no! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like any dog that ever lived--first cousin to a fish, I should say."

Sylvia laughed. "Why not make it grizzly bear, to take in the rest of the animal kingdom?"

"No," persisted Arnold. "Now I've thought of it, I _mean_ fish, a great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep pool and won't rise to any ordinary fly." He made a brain-jolting change of metaphor and went on: "The plain truth, and it's not so low-down as it seems, is that a big fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix. It _has_ to be that way! He hasn't got much of his own, and his tastes are some--"

"Molly must be sitting in the front row, then," commented Sylvia indifferently, as though tired of the subject. They were now at the tennis-court. "Run over to the summer-house and get my racquet, will you? It's on the bench."

"Yes, Molly's got plenty of _money_," Arnold admitted as he came back, his accent implying some other lack which he forgot to mention, absorbed as he at once became in coping with his adversary's strong, swift serve.

The change in him, as he began seriously to play, was startling, miraculous. His slack loose-jointedness stiffened into quick, flexible accuracy, his lounging, flaccid air disappeared in a glow of concentrated vigorous effort. The bored good-nature in his eyes vanished, burned out by a stern, purposeful intensity. He was literally and visibly another person. Sylvia played her best, which was excellent, far better than that of any other girl in the summer colony. She had been well trained by her father and her gymnasium instructor, and played with an economy of effort delightful to see; but she was soon driven by her opponent's tiger-like quickness into putting out at once her every resource. There, in the slowly fading light of the long mountain afternoon, the two young Anglo-Saxons poured out their souls in a game with the immemorial instinct of their race, fierce, grim, intent, every capacity of body and will-power brought into play, everything else in the world forgotten....

For some time they were on almost equal terms, and then Sylvia became aware that her adversary was getting the upper hand of her. She had, however, no idea what the effort was costing him, until after a blazing fire of impossibly rapid volleys under which she went down to defeat, she stopped, called out, "Game _and_ set!" and added in a generous tribute, "Say, you can _play_!" Then she saw that his face was almost purple, his eyes bloodshot, and his breath came in short, gasping pants. "Good gracious, what's the matter!" she cried, running towards him in alarm. She was deeply flushed herself, but her eyes were as clear as clear water, and she ran with her usual fawn-like swiftness. Arnold dropped on the bench, waving her a speechless rea.s.surance. With his first breath he said, "Gee! but you can hit it up, for a girl!"

"What's the _matter_ with you?" Sylvia asked again, sitting down beside him.

"Nothing! Nothing!" he panted. "My wind! It's confoundedly short."

He added a moment later, "It's tobacco--this is the sort of time the cigarettes get back at you, you know!" The twilight dropped slowly about them like a thin, clear veil. He thrust out his feet, shapely in their well-made white shoes, surveyed them with dissatisfaction, and added with moody indifference: "And c.o.c.ktails too. They play the d.i.c.kens with a fellow's wind."

Sylvia said nothing for a moment, looking at him by no means admiringly. Her life in the State University had brought her into such incessant contact with young men that the mere fact of sitting beside one in the twilight left her unmoved to a degree which Mr.

Sommerville's mother would have found impossible to imagine. When she spoke, it was with an impatient scorn of his weakness, which might have been felt by a fellow-athlete: "What in the world makes you do it, then?"

"Why not?" he said challengingly.

"You've just said why not--it spoils your tennis. It must spoil your polo. Was that what spoiled your baseball in college? You'd be twice the man if you wouldn't."

"Oh, what's the use?" he said, an immense weariness in his voice.

"What's the use of anything, if you are going to use _that_ argument?"

said Sylvia, putting him down conclusively.

He spoke with a sudden heartfelt simplicity, "d.a.m.n 'f I _know_, Sylvia." For the first time in all the afternoon, his voice lost its tonelessness, and rang out with the resonance of sincerity.

She showed an unflattering surprise. "Why, I didn't know you ever thought about such things."

He looked at her askance, dimly amused. "High opinion you have of me!"

She looked annoyed at herself and said with a genuine good-will in her voice, "Why, Arnold, you _know_ I've always liked you."

"You like me, but you don't think much of me," he diagnosed her, "and you show your good sense." He looked up at the picturesque white house, spreading its well-proportioned bulk on the top of the terraced hillside before them. "I hope Madrina is looking out of a window and sees us here, our heads together in the twilight. You've guessed, I suppose, that she had you come on here for my benefit. She thinks she's tried everything else,--now it's her idea to get me safely married. She'd have one surprise, wouldn't she, if she could hear what we're saying!"

"Well, it _would_ be a good thing for you," remarked Sylvia, as entirely without self-consciousness as though they were discussing the tennis game.

He was tickled by her coolness. "Well, Madrina sure made a mistake when she figured on _you_!" he commented ironically. And then, not having been subjected to the cool, hardy conditions which caused Sylvia's present clear-headedness, he felt his blood stirred to feel her there, so close, so alive, so young, so beautiful in the twilight.

He leaned towards her and spoke in a husky voice, "See here, Sylvia, why _don't_ you try it!"

"Oh, nonsense!" said the girl, not raising her voice at all, not stirring. "You don't care a bit for me."

"Yes, I do! I've _always_ liked you!" he said, not perceiving till after the words were out of his mouth that he had repeated her own phrase.

She laughed to hear it, and he drew back, his faint stirring of warmth dashed, extinguished. "The fact is, Sylvia," he said, "you're too nice a girl to fall in love with."

"What a horrid thing to say!" she exclaimed.

"About _you_?" he defended himself. "I mean it as a compliment."

"About falling in love," she said.

"Oh!" he said blankly, evidently not at all following her meaning.

"What time is it?" she now inquired, and on hearing the hour, "Oh, we'll be late to dress for dinner," she said in concern, rising and ascending the marble steps to the terrace next above them.

He came after her, long, loose-jointed, ungraceful. He was laughing.

"Do you realize that I've proposed marriage to you and you've turned me down?" he said.