At her charge the light of battle leaped to his eyes. "Then it was a maneuver? I suspected as much."
The audacity of her! The unparalleled audacity! "But I am not so much interested in maneuvers," he added merrily, "as I am in the strategy behind them."
She looked puzzled, though her manner was still mocking. "Is there always strategy," she p.r.o.nounced the word with care, "behind them?"
"Always in the art of warfare."
"But can"t there be a maneuver without warfare?" He could see that she was venturing beyond her depths; but he realized that a confession of ignorance was the last thing he must ever expect from her. Whatever the challenge she would meet it with her natural wit and her bright derision.
"Never," he rejoined emphatically. "A campaign goes either before or afterward."
A thoughtful frown knit her forehead. "Well, one didn"t go before, did it?" she inquired with an innocent air. "So I suppose--"
He ended her sentence on a note of merriment. "Then I must be prepared for the one that will follow!"
She threw out her hand with a gesture of mock despair. "Oh, you may have been mistaken, you know!"
"Mistaken? About the campaign?"
"No, about the maneuver. Perhaps there wasn"t any such thing, after all."
"Perhaps." Though his voice was stern, his eyes were laughing. "I am not so easily fooled as that."
"I doubt if you could be fooled at all." It was the first bit of flattery she had tossed him, and he found it strangely agreeable.
"I am not sure of that," he answered, "but the thing that perplexes me--the only thing--is why you should have thought it worth while."
Her eyes grew luminous with laughter, and the little red wings quivered as if they were about to take flight over her arching brows. "How do you know that I thought about it at all? Sometimes things just happen."
"But not in this case. You had arranged the whole incident for the stage."
"Do you mean that I fell down on purpose?"
"I mean that you were laughing up your sleeve all the time. You weren"t hurt and you knew it."
Her expression was enigmatical. "You think then that I arranged to fall down and risk breaking my bones for the sake of having you pick me up?"
she asked demurely.
Put so plainly the fact sounded embarra.s.sing, if not incredible. "I think you fell for the fun of it. I think also that you didn"t for a second risk breaking your bones. You are too nimble for that."
"I ought to be," she retorted daringly, "since I was born in a circus."
Surprised into silence, he studied her with a regard in which admiration for her courage was mingled with blank wonder at her recklessness. If she had inherited her father"s gift of expression, she appeared to possess also his dauntless humour. For an instant Stephen felt that her gaiety had entered into his spirit; and while his impression of her danced like wine in his head, he answered her in her own tone of mocking defiance.
"Well, everything that is born in a circus isn"t a clown."
Her eyes widened. "Is that meant for a compliment?"
"No, merely for a reminder. But if you were born in a circus, I a.s.sume that you didn"t perform in one."
She shook her head. "No, they took me away when I was a baby--just after Mother died. I never lived with the circus people, and Father didn"t either except when he was a child. Not that I should have been ashamed of it," she hastened to explain. "They are very interesting people."
"I am sure of it," he answered gravely, and he was very sure of it now.
"When I was a child," she went on in a matter-of-fact tone, "I used to make Father tell me all he could remember about the "freaks," as they called them. The fat woman--her name was really Mrs. Coventry--was very kind to him when he was little, and he never forgot it. He never forgets anybody who has ever been kind to him," she concluded with simple dignity.
An emotion which he could not define held Stephen speechless; and before he could command his words, she began again in the same cool and quiet voice. "His mother ran away to marry his father. She came of a very good family in Fredericksburg, and her people never forgave her or spoke to her afterward. But she was happy, and she never regretted it as long as she lived. It was love at first sight. Grandfather was Irish and he was--was--" she hesitated for a word, and at last with evident care selected, "magnificent." "He was magnificent," she repeated emphatically, "and she saw him first on horseback when she was out riding. Her horse became frightened by one of the animals in the circus, and he caught it and stopped it. It began that way, and then one night she stole out of the house after her family had gone to bed, and they ran away and were married. I think she was right," she added thoughtfully, "but then I reckon--I mean I suppose it is in my blood to take risks."
She looked up at him and he responded. "But where did you learn to see things like this, and to put them into words? Not in a circus?"
"I told you I couldn"t remember the circus. Mother was in one, and though Father never told me how he fell in love with her--he never talks of her--I think it must have been when he went back to see the people.
He always took an interest in them and tried to help them. He does still. Even now, if anybody belonging to a circus asks him for something, he never refuses him. When he was twelve years old somebody took him away and sent him to school, but he always says he never learned anything at school except misinformation about life. No books, he says, ever taught him the truth except the Bible and "Robinson Crusoe." He used to read me chapters of those every day--and he does still when he has the time."
What a strange world it was! How full of colour and incident, how drenched with the quality of the unusual!
"And what did you learn?" he asked.
"I?" She was speaking earnestly. "Oh, I learned a great many--no, a mult.i.tude of things about life."
At this he broke into a laugh of pure delight. "With a special course of instruction in maneuvers," he rejoined.
Though her smile showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with defiance. "And by the time we meet again I shall have learned about--strategy."
How ready she was to fence, and how quick with her attack! It was easy to believe that there was Irish blood in her veins and an Irish sparkle in her wit.
"Oh, then you will out-general me entirely! Isn"t it enough to force me to acknowledge your superior tactics?"
She appeared to scrutinize each separate letter. "Tactics? Have I been using superior tactics without knowing it?"
"That I can"t answer. Is there anything that has escaped your instinctive understanding?"
She laughed softly. "Well, there"s one thing you may be sure of. I"ll know a great deal more about some things by the time I see you again."
Then, with one of her darting bird-like movements, she ran down the steps and into the car. "I wish Father were here," she said, looking out at him. "He wants to talk to you."
"I should like to talk to him. I shall come again, if I may."
"Oh, of course, and next time we may both be at home." As the car started she called out teasingly. "My next maneuver may be more successful, you know!"
How provoking she was, and how inspiriting! Was she as shrewd, as sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display of the modern spirit? At least she was a part of her time--not, like Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the general march toward recklessness and unrestraint. Young as she was, he felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or pushed aside. She had learned the secret of transition--a perpetual motion that went in circles and was never still. Here, he realized, was where he had lost connection, where he had failed to hold his place in the turmoil. He had tried to stand off and reach a point of view, to become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to meditate, never to reason upon one"s course; but to sweep onward, somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction. Elasticity, variability--were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; martyrdom without faith. And around, above, beneath, the pervading mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows?
Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for ugliness? He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the disorder. If he could find that it contained a single redeeming principle that was superior to the old order, he felt that he should be able to surrender his disbelief.
He was leaving the gate when a woman, walking slowly in front of the house, spoke to him abruptly.
"If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?"
With the feeling that he was pa.s.sing again through a familiar nightmare, he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the evening before. In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less repellent than she had appeared in the darkness. The hollowness of her features gave a certain dignity to her expression--the look of one who is returning from the shadows of death. Years ago, before illness or dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion. Her black eyes were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quant.i.ty of coa.r.s.e black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye.
"I am sorry," she added as she recognized him. "I did not know it was you." As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pa.s.s on; but he made a movement to detain her.