"Very fine--and very relentless--" he laughed; "it is an unfriendly creature, the sea, you know."
She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her; they spoke little, a word now and then.
The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance; dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the gra.s.s, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the cliffs" edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.
For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle too far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied herself on his arm.
"I suppose," she said, "no swimmer could endure that battering."
"Not long."
"Would there be no chance?"
"Not one."
She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of the breakers.
"I--think--," he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left hand; and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back.
Neither spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff, and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over hers remained a sensation still--a strong, steady, masterful imprint lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though her hand still tightened under his--and she was conscious, too, that nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.
"Was I in any actual danger?" she asked curiously.
"I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me."
"I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in future."
"Exactly--if you don"t mind," he said smiling.
They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched herbage.
"That," she said impulsively, "is not what I said a few moments ago to a woman."
"What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?"
"I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a--a certain man to go to the devil alone!"
"Do you know any man who is going to the devil?"
"Do you?" she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of intimacy she had never dreamed of risking--nor had she the slightest idea whither the current would carry her.
They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet gra.s.s, the stars overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the sea.
"You mean me," he concluded.
"Do I?"
He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very clear--clear with excitement--but very friendly.
"Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?" she asked.
So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward, elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving her bare arms and shoulders a marble l.u.s.tre and tinting her eyes a deeper amethyst.
And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart quite bare--one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe in the influence of their s.e.x individually and collectively, she began wrong by telling him of her engagement--perhaps to emphasise her pure disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet plat.i.tudes which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.
Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely, she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was not aware that everybody else had pa.s.sed that way--it being the first immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.
And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for Siward"s benefit as bearing directly on his case.
Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself a code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own discoveries in that dog-eared science.
So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired--nay in the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living, that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:
"I never imagined you were engaged!"
"Is that what you have been thinking about?" she asked, innocently astonished.
"Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed--"
"But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?"
"I don"t know, but I didn"t," he said.
"Of course you didn"t; you"d known me for about three hours--there on the cliff--"
"But--Quarrier--!"
Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen--flickering, not yet settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the woman destined to be Quarrier"s wife. He had talked too much anyway.
Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had made a plain a.s.s of himself--that was all,--a garrulous a.s.s. And truly it seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow and divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts had taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.
"Don"t think the things you are thinking!" she said in a fierce little voice, leaning toward him.
"What do you mean?" he asked, taken aback.
"You know! Don"t! It is unfair--it is--is faithless--to me. I am your friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other and--n.o.body else!" She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed and hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to impulse and emotions.
"Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see--gave me a glimpse of yourself--of life"s battle as you foresee it? What if there is always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that miserable French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after confessing to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of confidence worth the reaction--the subsidence into the armored sh.e.l.l of self? Tell me truly, Mr. Siward, isn"t it?"
Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it, expectant, uncertain.
"If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you--to me, why should it trouble you that I know--and am thinking of things that concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to balance the account? I do give--interest, deep interest, sympathy if you ask it; I give confidence in return--if you desire it!"
"What can a girl like you need of sympathy?" he said smiling.
"You don"t know! you don"t know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if you must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your guard, do you think you are the only one?"
"Are you--one?" he said incredulously.
"Yes"--with an involuntary shudder--"not that way. It is easier for me; I think it is--I know it is. But there are things to combat--impulses, a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort--never even deep emotion."