Esther Chamberlain

“ They passed the foremost riders as these were swinging into the coast road, and for a few moments Florence saw oaks and ocean as a blur of olive-green pierced with flashes of bright blue.
“Too fast?” Holden inquired, his eyes on the horses’ ears.
“It couldn’t be!” she answered with excitement.
The rapid motion was what her mood needed to fire it. It lit a spark in her cold, lethargic determination. She was possessed with that feeling of triumph speed creates—a physical elation, a surety that nothing in life could stand still again. A faint color grew in her cheeks. ”

“ How could it be Julia’s, when Longacre had told her—? Florence filled her lungs with a deep, slow-drawn breath, as if she were drawing in courage to face what was rising in her mind. It was Longacre’s face as it had peered up into hers that morning, and his voice restlessly repeating, “I am something no woman could forgive!” Her quickening comprehension embraced what that might be. Longacre had told Julia nothing! She put her hand out behind her, touched the table to steady herself. ”

“ But when the rapid motion in the sharp half-light had changed for the long upward house-stair; when Longacre’s good night was but the memory of a hand-clasp around her fingers,—then she hurried to escape what was crowding on her elation. She shut the door of her room. She locked it; but the shadow that threatened had been too quick for her. The four walls closed it in. She turned up all the lights in the room. In their glare the shadow was fainter. She drew the curtains over the windows. She shut herself away from the growing light. ”

“ Neither Julia nor Bessie Lewis had appeared at luncheon. Julia had sent word that she would be late, to her mother’s absent-minded distraction. Mrs. Budd’s desire to rush away and fetch her fluttered before the faces of her guests like a flag of distress. In the end she was deflected by an imperative telephone that caught her just as her guests were rising. While they loitered between the dining-room and living-hall, chatting in groups, Julia, with Bessie Lewis at her heels, came down the stairs, habited, hatted, booted, drawing on her gloves, her riding-whip under her arm. ”

“ He had never had so much that air to her as now, this afternoon, when he encountered her stepping through the tall French window upon the veranda, and turned and lifted the passion-vines for her to pass under—such a pretty thing, she thought, for a man to do for a woman as old, as haggard, as self-absorbed as she. They went the length of the fennel walk together. She remembered the morning when Longacre had left Julia so impetuously to follow her as something that had happened a very long time ago—something into which Thair’s voice dropped sharply, shattering the image. ”

“ He kept her pace, not in response to her reckless spirit, but for fear of what might happen, with the desperate hope of averting disaster. They flew down the field toward the thunder of the sea, with the sun and the salt wind strong in their eyes; crashed through the hedge; scrambled down into a road, up the sandy bank on the other side, through the scrub-oaks with a rush, and at once the salt-meadows were before them, their skirts of cypress black on a purple sea. Over the ocean a white arm of fog extended stealthily. ”

“ She was younger far than Florence Essington, younger than Cissy Fitz Hugh, younger even than her own daughter, whom she presently came upon, teasing the dachshunds on the grassplot beside the “glass room.”
The girl was on her knees. Each separate thread of her gorgeous bush of hair glistening in the dazzle of the late morning sun, her flushing cheeks, her somber brows, her hot, bright eyes, were all a part of the ripple of color and motion she made in the dead, warm greenness. The two long, wriggling dogs threw themselves upon her with yelps and scramblings. ”

“ Her eyes had a fire that seldom burned in their somber pupils; a color and a fire that Holden marked in his greater leisure, with the slackened speed of the horses rising the steep hill.
“You look so lit up,” he told her, half wonderingly.
“It’s the driving,” she explained, “or rather flying. We hardly seemed to touch earth.”
“Just driving!” He was amused. “Well, I like it. It’s my play. It’s famous to have a strong, lively pair of brutes under your hand to hurry or pull up as you like.”
Florence looked as though that pleasure were quite within her comprehension. ”

“ Hounds in front and hunters behind were forgotten; between the cypresses crowding down from the hills, and the oblivion of fog beating in from sea, they sped, wild with the elation of flight, unmindful of beginning, oblivious of end.
Fog was already streaming among the fantastic trees of the Point of Pines, cutting them off in front; but Julia held an unswerving course until the damp breath blew on her hot cheeks, and moisture stood in pearls in her hair. ”

“ Longacre leaned across the table with a question to Florence, and she fancied that Julia listened to it. Her eyes and ears were unwontedly keen and sensitive for tones and expressions. The atmosphere was charged with diverse elements. The sense of cross-purposes around the table was as vivid to her mind as, to her eyes, the general disintegration upon the rising, and the confused crystallizations of people.
Cissy Fitz Hugh was already complaisantly established in the back seat of Thair’s automobile when Florence came out on the veranda. ”

“ She left him—Longacre, who habitually loafed out a ball,—with a desire to dance—to dance wildly, madly, with any one!
Safely and slowly steered around the room in Thair’s practised arm, Florence saw him whirling recklessly through the crowd, dancing double time in fine Viennese fashion, twice as fast as the rhythmic swing of the room, with Julia Budd a half-alarmed, half-angry, wholly excited partner. She seemed holding back, objecting; he was urging her on, domineering. He swept her along against her will.
“Oh, no, no; you don’t want to stop!” ”

“ She took Julia by the shoulders, who had slid to the floor, half kneeling, half sitting, the tears slipping down her cheeks.
“Even if you love him,” she cried, “isn’t he human? Can’t you forgive him that much? He will forgive you—men forgive more in women!”
Julia’s hands held the folds of her gown. “But what can I do?” she implored. She hung on the other’s words with a passionate dependence.
Florence, with an impulse, took the face between her hands. ”

“ Could not a creature with her strong pulse of life, her gorgeous senses, put more of herself, of her passion, into her voice? His accompaniment sang the composer’s meaning with keener comprehension than she, he thought savagely as his fingers fell on the last chord.
But the approval, the banalities, the applause, were all for the singer. They must have it again, Mrs. Budd’s guests.
But Julia, looking covertly at Longacre, whose approval alone was withheld, refused brusquely. No, she told Mrs. Fitz Hugh, the most voluble of the group around her, she would not sing again to-night. ”

“ The slamming of the car door brought her back shrewdly to her surroundings. She looked up. In the pictures of her memory Longacre had figured always as a boy, a Viennese student as she had seen him first. Now the sight of him as he was, coming down the aisle upon her, struck her as freshly as the impression of a stranger. He was no longer youth, painted in full curves and raw colors, but young maturity grayed over, sharp-lined, strenuous with the vital endeavor he had put into living. ”

“ Julia was gorgeous. If she had not been so beautiful she might have seemed overdone. She was alluring; she laughed and murmured to Thair until he was overwhelmed by the beauty of it. If he looked at her with all the admiration he gave to Gainsborough’s lovely, pictured ladies—and coveted her to frame and hang in his gallery—there was no reason Mrs. Budd should not imagine he coveted her to decorate the foot of his table. The memory of Cissy’s uncomfortable suggestions were confused with what seemed the near consummation of her hopes ”

“ Yet he looked at Julia.
Silent as she was, helpless, and not a little awkward, her very nearness elated him. When she turned to go he felt deserted. He snatched at any excuse to keep beside her.
“May I walk to the house with you?” He knew that had been the wrong thing to say.
“Of course,” she answered. Her lips trembled around the words. She had forgotten Cissy’s communication. Strange that a fact could be so unstable in the face of a personality! But in that moment her world was a short, green walk between fennel borders to a glass door.
They drank in the overwhelming sweet of heliotrope. ”

“ She looked at Julia. Not alone the beauty of her, but some suggestion in its generous richness of a like nature, made the rest of them seem cheap. Florence felt faded as she looked. What a woman for a man to lose!
Longacre’s eyes followed the direction Florence’s had taken. He made an impatient movement.
If he stayed a few days longer under the girl’s spell, he would find out himself how hard matters were with him. But before that happened he must be free of her. It came to Florence all at once that this man would not free himself. What a loyalty to lose! ”

“ Julia brought her whip down savagely on the black’s flank as she passed him. Longacre took an in-breath as they swept under the trees. The sun through the fine, blowing mist made a dazzle for the eyes.
Over a ground broken and spotted with black stumps the girl guided her horse with admirable skill, Longacre saving his neck by luck. Their pace perforce was slower, dodging the trees that sprang on them out of the mist like specters.
Then, with a hallo, a crashing rush, Thair broke through the scrub on their left. Old rider that he was, he knew the short cuts of every course. ”

“ The dragoness was all vociferous sympathy, but through it he remained aware of Florence Essington’s pure profile averted from him, looking across the room toward a gorgeous, rose-like Julia, blooming, the center of a circle of black coats.
But for Longacre, at that moment, the other side of the room might well have been the other side of the world. As the orchestra slid into a waltz of Strauss, and the lady of dragons was drawn away into the measure, he laid an eager hand on Florence’s arm, with an “Oh, I say, dance this with me!” hard to be denied. ”

“ She saw Cissy Fitz Hugh with a hand out to a dozen the minute she was out of the automobile—full-necked, close-cropped men; liquid-eyed women with cheeks like peaches and voices like ringing glass; how Cissy seemed to belong among them, to be one of them with an identity eloquent of a dozen summers of common pursuits, gossips, and scandals. ”

“ She ran. From the moment he had confounded her she had dropped all consideration of appearances. On the stair she passed a maid, her arms heaped with newly ironed linen and delicate flowered fabrics—frocks Julia had worn about the house. Then she must be packing. She would be in her room. Half-way down the upper hall, Florence heard the rushing approach of sweeping silk. She stopped, almost opposite her own door, and waited. Julia came down the hall, headlong even when walking. She saw Florence not until she was upon her. She started, drew herself together, made to go on, hesitated. ”

“ Theirs was a high, animal pulse—such relish and excitement of living as a runner has who pulls himself together for a leap. Those purposes and emotions that had had their growth in the thick atmosphere of the storm were quickened, pressing against circumstance, ready to burst out. They boded a crisis.
Julia Budd’s face alone was assurance of happenings as she came across the lawn with her long, free step, her skirts picked high, her dachshunds in leash. ”

“ She spurred forward. “We’ll finish by five,” she called back. “We can ride through a hedge—we can ride through a mist.”
“A ditch in a fog,” muttered Thair. “Not me!”
“We can ride like the devil and get through!” decided the M. F. H. “The damned dogs are off the scent again!”
Below, among the tussocks of the first meadow, the pack were whimpering, mingling, starting off on a false scent—returning, fawning, leaping up on Julia riding to and fro among them. The exasperated whipper-in beat at them. The four other riders came stringing over the rise among the sand-hummocks. ”