"Ah," she said, very gently, "that"s it. I see. You won"t believe me, but I a.s.sure you from now on I mean to be entirely different."
"Please, not too different."
"Oh yes, yes, as different as possible. I"ve been so unhappy, and unhappy about nothing definite--that"s the worst kind, only that I have not liked the life I was leading."
She glanced at him appealingly. She had tried to tell this simple story to so many people, for she had many friends, and yet no one had ever really understood. Some had told her she was spoiled, more, that there was no use in trying to change her life because she would soon marry; most of them had advised her to marry and find out what real trouble was. Now, as she spoke she saw that this strange young man from the sea not only understood her discontent, but thought it natural, almost commonplace.
She poured it all out. "Only the worst thing," she ended, "is that I"m not really any good. There isn"t anything else that I know how to do."
"I doubt that," he answered, and she began to doubt it, too. "I"m sure there are lots of things you could do if you put your mind on it. Did you ever try to write?"
Now, indeed, she felt sure that he was gifted with powers more than mortal--to have guessed this secret which no one else had ever suspected. She colored deeply.
"Why, yes," she answered, "I think I can--a little, only I"ve so little education."
"So little education?"
"Yes, I belong to the cultivated cla.s.ses--three languages and nothing solid."
"Well, you know, three languages seem pretty solid to me," said Ben, who had wrestled very unsuccessfully with the French tongue. "You speak three languages, and let me see, you know a good deal about painting and poetry and jade and Chinese porcelains?"
She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Oh, of course everyone knows about those things, but what good are they?"
They were a good deal of good to Ben. He pressed on toward his final goal. "What is your att.i.tude toward fairies?" he asked, and Miss c.o.x would have heard in his tone a faint memory of his voice when he engaged a new office-boy.
Her att.i.tude toward fairies was perfectly satisfactory, and he showed so much appreciation that she went on and told him her great secret in full. She had once had something published and been paid money for it--fifteen dollars--and probably never in her life had she spoken of any sum with so much respect. It had been, well, a sort of a review of a new ill.u.s.trated edition of Hans Andersen"s Tales, treating them as if they were modern stories, commenting on them from the point of view of morals and probability--making fun of people who couldn"t give themselves up to the charm of a story unless it tallied with their own horrid little experiences of life. She told it, she said, very badly, but perhaps he could get the idea.
He got it perfectly. "Good," he said. "I"ll give you a job. I"m a newspaper editor."
"Oh," she exclaimed, "you"re not Mr. Munsey, are you, or Mr. Reid, or Mr. Ochs?"
Her knowledge of newspaper owners seemed to come to a sudden end.
"No," he answered, smiling, "nor even Mr. Hearst. I did not say I owned a newspaper. I edit it. I need some one just like you for my book page, only you"d have to come to New York and work hard, and there wouldn"t be very much salary. Can you work?"
"Anyone can."
"Well, will you?"
"Indeed I will." (It was a vow.) "And now I must go. I have to drive myself home in an open car, and the tourists do stare at one so--in fancy dress."
"Yes, but when am I to see you again? I leave Newport to-night."
"Telephone me--2079--and we"ll arrange to do something this afternoon."
"And whom shall I ask for?"
"Telephone at two-fifteen to the minute, and I"ll answer the telephone myself."
She evidently rather enjoyed the mystery of their not knowing each other"s names. But a black idea occurred to Ben. She had slid off the raft and swum a few strokes before he shouted to her:
"Look here. Your name isn"t Eugenia, is it?"
She waved her hand. "No, I"m Crystal," she called back.
"Good-by, Crystal."
This time she did not wave, but, swimming on her side with long, easy strokes, she gave him a sweet, rea.s.suring look.
After she had gone he lay down on the raft with his face buried in his arms. A few moments before he had thought he could never see enough of the sunrise and the sea, but now he wanted to shut it out in favor of a much finer spectacle within him. So this was love. Strange that no one had ever been able to prepare you for it. Strange that poets had never been able to give you a hint of its stupendous inevitability. He wondered if all miracles were like that--so simple--so--
Suddenly he heard her voice near him. He lifted his head from his arms. She was there in the water below him, clinging to the raft with one hand.
"I just came back to tell you something," she said. "I thought you ought to know it before things went any farther."
He thought, "Good G.o.d! she"s in love with some one else!" and the horror of the idea made him look at her severely.
"I"m not perhaps just as I seem--I mean my views are rather liberal.
In fact"--she brought it out with an effort--"I"m almost a socialist."
The relief was so great that Ben couldn"t speak. He bent his head and kissed the hand that had tempted him a few hours before.
She did not resent his action. Her special technique in such matters was to pretend that such little incidents hardly came into the realm of her consciousness. She said, "At two-fifteen, then," and swam away for good.
Later in the day a gentleman who owned both a bathing house and a bathing suit on Bailey"s beach was showing the latter possession to a group of friends.
"No one can tell me that Newport isn"t damp," he said. "I haven"t been in bathing for twenty-four hours, and yet I can actually wring the water out of my suit."
CHAPTER II
That same morning, about ten o"clock, Mr. William Cord was shut up in the study of his house--shut up, that is, as far as entrance from the rest of the house was concerned, but very open as to windows looking out across the gra.s.s to the sea. It was a small room, and the leather chairs which made up most of its furnishings were worn, and the bookshelves were filled with volumes like railroad reports and _Poor"s Manual_, but somehow the total effect of the room was so agreeable that the family used it more than Mr. Cord liked.
He was an impressive figure, tall, erect, and with that suggestion of unbroken health which had had something to do with his success in life. His hair must have been of a sandy brown, for it had turned, not gray nor white, but that queer no-color that sandy hair does turn, melting into all pale surroundings. His long face was not vividly colored, either, but was stamped with the immobility of expression that sensitive people in contact with violent life almost always acquire. The result was that there seemed to be something dead about his face until you saw his eyes, dark and fierce, as if all the fire and energy of the man were concentrated in them.
He was dressed in gray golfing-clothes that smelled more of peat than peat does, and, though officially supposed to be wrestling with the more secret part of correspondence which even his own secretary was not allowed to see, he was actually wiggling a new golf-club over the rug, and toying with the romantic idea that it would enable him to drive farther than he had ever driven before.
There was a knock at the door. Mr. Cord leaned the driver in a corner, clasped his hands behind his back, straddled his legs a trifle, so that they seemed to grow out of the rug as the eternal oak grows out of the sod, and said, "Come in," in the tone of a man who, considering the importance of his occupation, bears interruption exceedingly well.
Tomes, the butler, entered. "Mr. Verriman, sir, to see you."
"To see _me_?"
"Yes, sir."