“I don’t care what you do!” said Carr, gayly. “Use my telephone if you like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper’s Bluff, for all I care! But”–and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him–“if you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won’t drag me and my terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours.”
“No,” said Yates, “I won’t. And that ends my career on Park Row. I’m going to telephone my resignation.”
Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied and retrospective smile.
“That’s very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturally half scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting very handsomely in this horrible dilemma—-“
“Naturally,” interrupted Yates. “I must stand by the family into which I am, as you know, destined to marry.”
“To be sure,” nodded Carr, absently; “it really looks that way, doesn’t it! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago.”
“Yes, I have,” said Yates.
“No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merry old Top. I–but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusually considerate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?”
Yates informed him modestly.
“Well, why didn’t you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I’ve known your father for twenty years. Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to marry Drusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I’d have told you she was too young; and she is! I’d have told you to wait; and you’d have waited. You’d have been civil enough to wait when I explained to you that I’ve already lost, by marriage, two daughters through that accursed machine. You wouldn’t entirely denude me of daughters, would you?”
“I only want one,” said John Yates, simply.
“Well, all right; I’m a decent father-in-law when I’ve got to be. I’m really a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they’ll admit it.” He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to look at, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicament returned for a moment.
“Yates,” he said unsteadily, “all I ask of you is to keep this terrible n-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of a person is f-fated to lead me to the altar!”
Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
“Surely,” he said, “your unknown intended must be some charming leader in the social activities of the great metropolis.”
“Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may be anything, Yates! She–she might even be b-black!”
“Black!”
Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his eyeglass.
“I think I’d better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn, exactly what has happened to me,” he said. “And I think I’ll go through the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish reporters can’t follow me. Ferdinand!” to the man at the door, “ring up the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I’m going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while.”
“About–Drusilla, sir?” ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone, speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
“To think,” muttered Carr, “that only an hour ago I was agreeably and comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I’m in flight–pursued by furies of my own invoking–threatened with love in its most hideous form– matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I know,” he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered heavily by lilacs; “and the curious thing about it is that I really don’t care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing.”
He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car–a little runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman–a lady’s maid by her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually agreeable-looking girl.
“Has something gone wrong with your motor?” inquired Mr. Carr, pleasantly.
“I am afraid so.” She didn’t say “sir”; probably because she was too pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
“Let me see,” began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel; “perhaps I can make it go.”
“It won’t go,” she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming head. “I’ve been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something; but it won’t.”
Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the hood, examined the upholstery. He didn’t know anything about motors.
“I’m afraid,” he said sadly, “that there’s something wrong with the magne-e-to!”
“Do you think it is as bad as that?”
“I fear so,” he said gravely. “If I were you I’d get out–and keep well away from that machine.”
“Why?” she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
“It _might_ blow up.”
They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed farther away, hand in hand.
“I–I hate to leave it there all alone,” said the maid, when they had backed completely out of sight of the car. “If there was only some safe place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode.”
They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
“You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water,” said Mr. Carr.
“But I don’t know how to row.”
Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
“I have,” said Mr. Carr, “several hours at my disposal before I go to town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor blow up. Shall we?”
“It is most kind of you—-“
“Not at all. It would be most kind of you.”
She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr. Carr.
It was a very lovely morning in early June.
As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment, stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then, untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly frolicsome.
“It’s curious how I feel about this,” he observed, digging both oars into the water.
“_How_ do you feel, Mr. Carr?”
“Like a bird,” he said softly.
And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently caressing the classic contours of Cooper’s Bluff, and upon that monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates, in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and looked at Drusilla.
Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded over Cooper’s Bluff.
“There’s no use,” said Drusilla at last; “one can draw a landscape from every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?”
“Perhaps,” he said, “I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?”
“Do you think that would help?”
“I think it helps–somehow.”
Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
After a while she said: “I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don’t you?”
They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers, and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
“It is very pleasant to have you here,” she said dreamily.
“It is very heavenly to be here,” he said.
“How generous you are to give us so much of your time!” murmured Drusilla.
“I think so, too,” said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. “And I am becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is.”
“Don’t you like him as well as I do?” asked Drusilla.
Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
“Not quite as well,” she said frankly. “You know, Drusilla, you are very nearly in love with him.” And she resumed her sketching.
Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. “Am I?” she said absently.
[Illustration: “Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I had better hold your pencil again'”]
“Are you?” he repeated, close to her shoulder.
She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
“What is it–to love? Is it”–she looked at him undisturbed–“is it to be quite happy and lazy with a man like you?”
He was silent.
“I thought,” she continued, “that there would be some hesitation, some shyness about it–some embarrassment. But there, has been none between you and me.”
He said nothing.
She went on absently:
“You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much for you…. And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we engaged?”
“Are we?” he asked.
“Yes–if you wish…. Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?”
“There’s a ring,” observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and using a sponge. “You’ve got to get her one, Mr. Yates.”
Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
“How simple it is, after all!” she said. “I have read in the books Pa-pah permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers…. Are we lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Some time or other, when it is convenient,” observed Flavilla, “you ought to kiss each other occasionally.”
“That doesn’t come until I’m a bride, does it?” asked Drusilla.
“I believe it’s a matter of taste,” said Flavilla, rising and naively stretching her long, pretty limbs.
She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
“How curious!” she said after a moment. “There is Pa-pah on the water rowing somebody’s maid about.”
“What!” exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
“How extraordinary,” said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the bluff; “and they’re singing, too, as they row!”
From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr. Carr’s rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
“_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._”
The sunlight fell on the maid’s coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle of Mr. Carr.
“Pa-_pah!_” cried Flavilla.
Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then resumed his oars and his song.
“How extraordinary!” said Flavilla. “Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ is rowing somebody’s maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?”
“Perhaps it’s one of our maids,” said Drusilla; “but that would be rather odd, too, wouldn’t it, Mr. Yates?”
“A–little,” he admitted. And his heart sank.
Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
“I’m going to see whose maid it is,” she called back.
Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
So _this_ was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by mistake, summoned his own affinity! And _what_ an affinity! A saucy soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the _coulisse_ of a Parisian theater!
Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future stepmother in cap and apron!–his own future stepmother-in-law!
And in the misery of that moment’s realization John Chillingham Yates showed the material of which he was constructed.
“Dear,” he said gently.
“Do you mean me?” asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her to her feet instinctively.
“What is it, Jack?” she asked.
She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
“What is it?” she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path; and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her youth. “Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy–or ill?”
He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
“Jack,” she said tremulously.
He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through her. Yes, there _was_ more to love than she had expected.
“Are you unhappy?” she asked. “Tell me. I can’t bear to see you this way. I–I never did–before.”
“Will you love me; Drusilla?”
“Yes–yes, I will, Jack.”
“Dearly?”
“I do–dearly.” The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and deepened.
“Will you marry me, Drusilla?”
“Yes…. You frighten me.”
She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
There was a silence, a sob.
“Jack–darling–I–I love you so!”
Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
“I’m horridly hungry,” she said. “It’s luncheon time, isn’t it? And, by the way, it’s all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve in the tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt’s bazaar, and her runabout broke down and nearly blew up.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” exclaimed Drusilla.
“I’m talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt’s younger sister from Philadelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady’s maid. Tea,” she added, “is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And,” she continued, “if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we’d better go home and dress…. _What_ are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?”
Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
“Dearest little sister,” she said shyly and tenderly, “we have something very wonderful to tell you.”
“What is it?” asked Flavilla.
“We–we are–engaged,” whispered Drusilla, radiant.
“Why, I knew that already!” said Flavilla.
“Did you?” sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover. “I didn’t…. Being in love is a much more complicated matter than you and I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?”
[Illustration]
XVI
FLAVILLA
_Containing a Parable Told with Such Metaphorical Skill that the Author Is Totally Unable to Understand It_
The Green Mouse now dominated the country; the entire United States was occupied in getting married. In the great main office on Madison Avenue, and in a thousand branch offices all over the Union, Destyn-Carr machines were working furiously; a love-mad nation was illuminated by their sparks.
Marriage-license bureaus had been almost put out of business by the sudden matrimonial rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops, as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic equaled only by a more terrible _coup_ in slightly worn shoes.
All America was rushing to get married; from Seattle to Key West the railroads were blocked with bridal parties; a vast hum of merrymaking resounded from the Golden Gate to Governor’s Island, from Niagara to the Gulf of Mexico. In New York City the din was persistent; all day long church bells pealed, all day long the rattle of smart carriages and hired hacks echoed over the asphalt. A reporter of the _Tribune_ stood on top of the New York Life tower for an entire week, devouring cold-slaw sandwiches and Marie Corelli, and during that period, as his affidavit runs, “never for one consecutive second were his ample ears free from the near or distant strains of the Wedding March.”
And over all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen– these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people, scattering encouraging blessings on every bride.
A tremendous rise in values set in; the newly married required homes; architects were rushed to death; builders, real-estate operators, brokers, could not handle the business hurled at them by impatient bridegrooms.
Then, seizing time by the fetlock, some indescribable monster secured the next ten years’ output of go-carts. The sins of Standard Oil were forgotten in the menace of such a national catastrophe; mothers’ meetings were held; the excitement became stupendous; a hundred thousand brides invaded the Attorney-General’s office, but all he could think of to say was: “Thirty centuries look down upon you!”
These vague sentiments perplexed the country. People understood that the Government meant well, but they also realized that the time was not far off when millions of go-carts would be required in the United States. And they no longer hesitated.
All over the Union fairs and bazaars were held to collect funds for a great national factory to turn out carts. Alarmed, the Trust tried to unload; militant womanhood, thoroughly aroused, scorned compromise. In every city, town, and hamlet of the nation entertainments were given, money collected for the great popular go-cart factory.
The affair planned for Oyster Bay was to be particularly brilliant–a water carnival at Center Island with tableaux, fireworks, and illuminations of all sorts.
Reassured by the magnificent attitude of America’s womanhood, business discounted the collapse of the go-cart trust and began to recover from the check very quickly. Stocks advanced, fluctuated, and suddenly whizzed upward like skyrockets; and the long-expected wave of prosperity inundated the country. On the crest of it rode Cupid, bow and arrows discarded, holding aloft in his right hand a Destyn-Carr machine.
For the old order of things had passed away; the old-fashioned doubts and fears of courtship were now practically superfluous.
Anybody on earth could now buy a ticket and be perfectly certain that whoever he or she might chance to marry would be the right one–the one intended by destiny.
Yet, strange as it may appear, there still remained, here and there, a few young people in the United States who had no desire to be safely provided for by a Destyn-Carr machine.
Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate might be.
One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla. To see her entire family married by machinery was enough for her; to witness such consummate and collective happiness became slightly cloying. Perfection can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy a banjo.
“What I desire,” she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, “is a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were in love with me, and I wouldn’t take anything for the–experience. Or,” she added innocently, “for the chances that some day three or four more agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by making mistakes–very pleasantly.”
Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her–four married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fete and Go-cart Fair.
“No,” she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery scale onto the mermaid’s dress lying across her knees, “I’ll take my chances with men. It’s better fun to love a man not intended for me, and make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have a horrid old machine settle you for life.”
“But you are wasting time, dear,” explained her stepmother gently.
“Oh, no, I’m not. I’ve been engaged three times and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. That isn’t wasting time, is it? And it’s _such_ fun! He thinks he’s in love and you think you’re in love, and you have such an agreeable time together until you find out that you’re spoons on somebody else. And then you find out you’re mistaken and you say you always want him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly new man—-“
“Flavilla!”
“Yes, Pa-_pah_.”
“Are you utterly demoralized!”
“Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard, after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I’m not demoralized; I’m only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let me.”
The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
Her choice of role and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now superfluous and out of date–the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume. When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and singing away like the Musical Arts.
“And,” she thought secretly, “if there remains upon this machine-made earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn’t surprise me very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me to be his. And I’d be very likely to listen to his suggestion.”
So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode–but not giving any such reason to her protesting family–she vigorously resisted all attempts to deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and role in the coming water fete. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to intervene.
She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a collapsed fish in the sunshine.
“It’s finished,” she said. “Now I’m going off somewhere by myself to rehearse.”
“In the water?” asked her father uneasily.
“Certainly.”
As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water’s edge, hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was to sing in her role of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
“The thing to do,” she thought to herself, “is to find some nice, little, wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must know whether I can swim in this thing–and whether I can sing while swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses.”
The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the gravelly shores of Northport.
“I’ll make a carry,” thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly undressed and drew on the mermaid’s scaly suit, which fitted her to the throat as beautifully as her own skin.
It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were incased in a fish’s tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed to wriggle down to the water’s edge.
A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the surroundings.
Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either, because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction of New England.
So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing, golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward, and poured forth melody.
As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously, and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
_Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Dass ich so traurig bin—-_
she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping her tail.
She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help her out.
On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it–at first.
However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour, steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually attractive features.
“That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right,” he reflected, “but why on earth does she dope out the same old thing?”
He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
“It can’t be a phonograph,” he reasoned. “No sane person could endure an hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour, either.”
Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder, walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree, and climbed it.
Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved, glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and squinted through them.
“Great James!” he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the glasses to destruction on the ground below.
How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. “Either I’m crazy,” he shouted aloud, “or there’s a–a mermaid out there, and I’m going to find out before they chase me to the funny house!”
There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen overboard.
“This is terrible,” he groaned. “If I _didn’t_ see what I think I saw, I’ll eat my hat; if I did see what I’m sure I saw, I’m madder than the hatter who made it!”
Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
“Oh, bunch!” he moaned; “it’s horribly like the real thing; and here I come headlong, as they do in the story books—-“
He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat’s nose plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out, and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other side of the woods.
And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak- kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber; his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape–white-armed, golden- haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
A terrible calm descended upon him.
“This is interesting,” he said aloud.
A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring his shoulders.
“I may as well face the fact,” he said, “that I, Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now, this very moment, looking at a–a mermaid in Long Island Sound!”
He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter, knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in speech:
“The–thing–to–do,” he said very slowly and deliberately, “is to swim out and–and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I’ll probably feel better—-“
He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk calmly all the while.
“The thing to do,” he went on dully, “is to swim over there and get a look at it. Of course, it isn’t really there. As for drowning–it really doesn’t matter…. In the midst of life we are in Long Island…. And, if it _is_ there–I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx—-“
Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[A] of Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape on the ruddy rocks.
[Footnote A: Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.]
Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she gently beat time with her tail.
So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman might come into view–just to see whether he’d really go overboard after her.
However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the floating weeds almost at her feet.
“Goodness,” she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail fettered her.
“Are you real!” gasped Kingsbury.
“Y-yes…. Are you?”
“Great James!” he half shouted, half sobbed, “are you _human?_”
“V-very. Are _you?_”
He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
“I heard singing,” he said dreamily, “and I climbed a tree and saw–you! Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_”
“You thought I was a _real_ one?”
“I thought that I thought I saw a real one.”
She looked at him hopefully.
“Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?”
“I don’t know what compelled me.”
“But–you _were_ compelled?”
“I–it seems so—-“
“O-h!” Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin and gazed at him.
“To think,” she said softly, “that you believed me to be a real siren, and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn’t it exciting?”
He looked at her, then turned red:
“Yes, it is,” he said.
Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek, half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not exhibit him at his best.
But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
“Please fix your hair,” she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
“My hair?”
“Certainly. I want to look at you.”
He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
“Oh!” she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, “you _are_ attractive!”
At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
“To think,” she murmured, “that _I_ lured _you_ out here!”
“I _am_ thinking about it,” he said.
She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
“I wonder,” she said, “what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr.”
“Not one of the Carr triplets!”
“Yes–but,” she added quickly, “I’m not married. Are you?”
“Oh, no, no, no!” he said hastily. “I’m Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point, Northport—-“
“Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me, _are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound? Because I–I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every day or two.”
“Then,” he said, “you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his horse.”
“I–I _do_ adore you!” she exclaimed impulsively.
“Of course, you d-d-don’t mean that,” he stammered, striving to smile.
“Yes–almost. Tell me, you–I know you are not like other men! _You_ never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?”
“Never!”
“Neither have I…. And so you are not in love–are you?”
“No.”
“Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not become engaged to somebody by machinery…. I wonder whom you are destined for.”
“Nobody–by machinery.”
She clapped her hands. “Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn’t it? I _don’t_ want to marry the man I ought to marry. I’d rather take chances with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me…. There was, in the old days–before everybody married by machinery–something not altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn’t there?… It’s perfectly delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to what might have been destruction!”
Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight into his.
“It _was_ destruction,” he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. “Utter destruction to my peace of mind,” he said again.
“You–don’t think that you love me, do you?” she asked. “That would be too–too perfect a climax…. _Do_ you?” she asked curiously.
“I–think so.”
“Do–do you _know_ it?” He gazed bravely at her: “Yes.”
She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
“Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love me? Do you? Are you _sure_?”
“Yes…. Will you try to love me?”
“Well, you know that sirens don’t care for people…. I’ve already been engaged two or three times…. I don’t mind being engaged to you.”
“Couldn’t you care for me, Flavilla?”
“Why, yes. I do…. Please don’t touch me; I’d rather not. Of course, you know, I couldn’t really love you so quickly unless I’d been subjected to one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don’t you? But,” she added frankly, “I wouldn’t like to have you get away from me. I–I feel like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost cat—-“
“What!”
“Oh, I _didn’t_ mean anything unpleasant–truly I didn’t. You know how tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one—-“
He got up, mad all through.
“_Are_ you offended?” she asked sorrowfully. “When I didn’t mean anything except that my heart–which is rather impressionable–feels very warmly and tenderly toward the man who swam after me…. Won’t you understand, please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever married.”
“It wouldn’t be machine-made bliss, anyway,” he said.
That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
“Also,” he added, “I thought you desired to take a sportsman’s chances?”
“I–do.”
“And I thought you didn’t want to marry the man you ought to marry.”
“That is–true.”
“Then you certainly ought not to marry me–but, will you?”
“How can I when I don’t–love you.”
“You don’t love me because you ought not to on such brief acquaintance…. But _will_ you love me, Flavilla?”
She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling her cheeks, the fish’s tail curled up against her side.
“_Will_ you?”
“I don’t know,” she said faintly.
“Try.”
“I–am.”
“Shall I help you?”
Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing stirred but her heart.
“Shall I help you to love me?” he breathed.
“No–I am–past help.” She raised her head.
“This is all so–so wrong,” she faltered, “that I think it must be right…. Do you truly love me?… Don’t kiss me if you do…. Now I believe you…. Lift me; I can’t walk in this fish’s tail…. Now set me afloat, please.”
He lifted her, walked to the water’s edge, bent and placed her in the sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves, flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
“Are you coming?” she called back to him.
He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very slowly, she drew him down into the water.
* * * * *
“I am quite sure,” she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, “that you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so dearly that I don’t care.”
“Neither do I,” he said; “will you have another sandwich?”
And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled adorably at her lover.
[Illustration]
OTHER BOOKS BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic Three–Fate, Chance, and Destiny–and how it frequently happened that a young man “tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell plump into the open arms of Destiny.” Perhaps it was due to one of the pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an illustrator for _Life, Truth_, and other periodicals. But already the desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris, where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the title of “In the Quarter.” The same year he published another book, “The King in Yellow,” a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
Writing of Mr. Chambers’s novel of last fall
THE DANGER MARK
in _The Bookman_, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, “In this last field (the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length, found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a comprehensive human comedy of New York.”
This is another novel of society life like “The Fighting Chance” and “The Firing Line.” The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl, inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned out, on coming of age, into New York society–two children educated by a great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real, perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense, powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
Mr. Chambers’s third novel of society life is
THE FIRING LINE
Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book, Mr. Chambers’s purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury, suddenly finds herself on life’s firing line, battling with one of the most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
THE YOUNGER SET
is the second of Mr. Chambers’s society novels. It takes the reader into the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life, Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the story is always foremost. For “The Younger Set,” Mr. Chambers has provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it, even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom everyone would seek to emulate.
The earliest of Mr. Chambers’s society novels is
THE FIGHTING CHANCE
It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of ruin, fight out their battles–two weaknesses joined with love to make a strength.
It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of the period.
SPECIAL MESSENGER
is the title of Mr. Chambers’s novel just preceding “The Danger Mark.” It is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times, in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both sides of the conflict.
THE RECKONING
is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically, of a series of which “Cardigan” and “The Maid-at-Arms” were the first two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr. Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof of the artist’s imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
IOLE
Another splendid example of the author’s versatility is this farcical, humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough more than to mention “The Tracer of Lost Persons,” “The Tree of Heaven,” “Some Ladies in Haste,” and Mr. Chambers’s delightful nature books for children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through “Outdoor-Land,” “Mountain-Land,” “Orchard-Land,” “River-Land,” “Forest- Land,” and “Garden-Land.” They, in turn, are as different from his novels in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the reader’s nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him “the most popular writer in the country.”