"Shall I tell you?"
"Yes."
"You will not be unhappy if I tell you?"
"N-no."
"Have you any idea what I am going to say, Eileen?"
She looked up quickly, frightened at the tremor in his voice:
"Don"t--don"t say it, Captain Selwyn!"
"Will you listen--as a penance?"
"I--no, I cannot--"
He said quietly: "I was afraid you could not listen. You see, Eileen, that, after all, a man does know when he is done for--"
"Captain Selwyn!" She turned and caught his hands in both of hers, her eyes bright with tears: "Is that the penalty for what I said? Did you think I invited this--"
"Invited! No, child," he said gently. "I was fool enough to believe in myself; that is all. I have always been on the edge of loving you. Only in dreams did I ever dare set foot across that frontier. Now I have dared. I love you. That is all; and it must not distress you."
"But it does not," she said; "I have always loved you--dearly, dearly... . Not in that way... . I don"t know how... . Must it be in _that_ way, Captain Selwyn? Can we not go on in the other way--that dear way which I--I have--almost spoiled? Must we be like other people--must sentiment turn it all to commonplace? ... Listen to me; I do love you; it is perfectly easy and simple to say it. But it is not emotional, it is not sentimental. Can"t you see that in little things--in my ways with you? I--if I were sentimental about you I would call you Ph--by your first name, I suppose. But I can"t; I"ve tried to--and it"s very, very hard--and makes me self-conscious. It is an effort, you see--and so would it be for me to think of you sentimentally.
Oh, I couldn"t! I couldn"t!--you, so much of a man, so strong and generous and experienced and clever--so perfectly the embodiment of everything I care for in a man! I love you dearly; but--you saw! I could--could not bring myself to touch even your hair--even in pure mischief... . And--sentiment chills me; I--there are times when it would be unendurable--I could not use an endearing term--nor suffer a--a caress... . So you see--don"t you? And won"t you take me for what I am?--and as I am?--a girl--still young, devoted to you with all her soul--happy with you, believing implicitly in you, deeply, deeply sensible of your goodness and sweetness and loyalty to her. I am not a woman; I was a fool to say so. But you--you are so overwhelmingly a man that if it were in me to love--in that way--it would be you! ... Do you understand me? Or have I lost a friend? Will you forgive my foolish boast? Can you still keep me first in your heart--as you are in mine?
And pardon in me all that I am not? Can you do these things because I ask you?"
"Yes," he said.
CHAPTER IX
A NOVICE
Gerald came to Silverside two or three times during the early summer, arriving usually on Friday and remaining until the following Monday morning.
All his youthful admiration and friendship for Selwyn had returned; that was plainly evident--and with it something less of callow self-sufficiency. He did not appear to be as c.o.c.k-sure of himself and the world as he had been; there was less b.u.mptiousness about him, less aggressive complacency. Somewhere and somehow somebody or something had come into collision with him; but who or what this had been he did not offer to confide in Selwyn; and the older man, dreading to disturb the existing accord between them, forbore to question him or invite, even indirectly, any confidence not offered.
Selwyn had slowly become conscious of this change in Gerald. In the boy"s manner toward others there seemed to be hints of that seriousness which maturity or the first pressure of responsibility brings, even to the more thoughtless. Plainly enough some experience, not wholly agreeable, was teaching him the elements of consideration for others; he was less impulsive, more tolerant; yet, at times, Selwyn and Eileen also noticed that he became very restless toward the end of his visits at Silverside; as though something in the city awaited him--some duty, or responsibility not entirely pleasant.
There was, too, something of soberness, amounting, at moments, to discontented listlessness--not solitary brooding; for at such moments he stuck to Selwyn, following him about and remaining rather close to him, as though the elder man"s mere presence was a comfort--even a protection.
At such intervals Selwyn longed to invite the boy"s confidence, knowing that he had some phase of life to face for which his experience was evidently inadequate. But Gerald gave no sign of invitation; and Selwyn dared not speak lest he undo what time and his forbearance were slowly repairing.
So their relations remained during the early summer; and everybody supposed that Gerald"s two weeks" vacation would be spent there at Silverside. Apparently the boy himself thought so, too, for he made some plans ahead, and Austin sent down a very handsome new motor-boat for him.
Then, at the last minute, a telegram arrived, saying that he had sailed for Newport on Neergard"s big yacht! And for two weeks no word was received from him at Silverside.
Late in August, however, he wrote a rather colourless letter to Selwyn, saying that he was tired and would be down for the week-end.
He came, thinner than usual, with the city pallor showing through traces of the sea tan. And it appeared that he was really tired; for he seemed inclined to lounge on the veranda, satisfied as long as Selwyn remained in sight. But, when Selwyn moved, he got up and followed.
So subdued, so listless, so gentle in manner and speech had he become that somebody, in his temporary absence, wondered whether the boy were perfectly well--which voiced the general doubt hitherto unexpressed.
But Austin laughed and said that the boy was merely finding himself; and everybody acquiesced, much relieved at the explanation, though to Selwyn the explanation was not at all satisfactory.
There was trouble somewhere, stress of doubt, pressure of apprehension, the gravity of immaturity half realising its own inexperience. And one day in September he wrote Gerald, asking him to bring Edgerton Lawn and come down to Silverside for the purpose of witnessing some experiments with the new smokeless explosive, Chaosite.
Young Lawn came by the first train; Gerald wired that he would arrive the following morning.
He did arrive, unusually pallid, almost haggard; and Selwyn, who met him at the station and drove him over from Wyossett, ventured at last to give the boy a chance.
But Gerald remained utterly unresponsive--stolidly so--and the other instantly relinquished the hope of any confidence at that time--shifting the conversation at once to the object and reason of Gerald"s coming, and gaily expressing his belief that the time was very near at hand when Chaosite would figure heavily in the world"s list of commercially valuable explosives.
It was early in August that Selwyn had come to the conclusion that his Chaosite was likely to prove a commercial success. And now, in September, his experiments had advanced so far that he had ventured to invite Austin, Gerald, Lansing, and Edgerton Lawn, of the Lawn Nitro-Powder Company, to witness a few tests at his cottage laboratory on Storm Head; but at the same time he informed them with characteristic modesty that he was not yet prepared to guarantee the explosive.
About noon his guests arrived before the cottage in a solemn file, halted, and did not appear overanxious to enter the laboratory on Storm Head. Also they carefully cast away their cigars when they did enter, and seated themselves in a nervous circle in the largest room of the cottage. Here their eyes instantly became glued to a great bowl which was piled high with small rose-tinted cubes of some substance which resembled symmetrical and translucent crystals of pink quartz. That was Chaosite enough to blow the entire cliff into smithereens; and they were aware of it, and they eyed it with respect.
First of all Selwyn laid a cubic crystal on an anvil, and struck it sharply and repeatedly with a hammer. Austin"s thin hair rose, and Edgerton Lawn swallowed nothing several times; but n.o.body went to heaven, and the little cube merely crumbled into a flaky pink powder.
Then Selwyn took three cubes, dropped them into boiling milk, fished them out again, twisted them into a waxy taper, placed it in a candle-stick, and set fire to it. The taper burned with a flaring brilliancy but without odour.
Then Selwyn placed several cubes in a mortar, pounded them to powder with an iron pestle, and, measuring out the tiniest pinch--scarcely enough to cover the point of a penknife, placed a few grains in several paper cartridges. Two wads followed the powder, then an ounce and a half of shot, then a wad, and then the crimping.
The guests stepped gratefully outside; Selwyn, using a light fowling-piece, made pattern after pattern for them; and then they all trooped solemnly indoors again; and Selwyn froze Chaosite and boiled it and baked it and melted it and took all sorts of hair-raising liberties with it; and after that he ground it to powder, placed a few generous pinches in a small hand-grenade, and affixed a primer, the secret composition of which he alone knew. That was the key to the secret--the composition of the primer charge.
"I used to play base-ball in college," he observed smiling--"and I used to be a pretty good shot with a s...o...b..ll."
They followed him to the cliff"s edge, always with great respect for the awful stuff he handled with such apparent carelessness. There was a black sea-soaked rock jutting out above the waves; Selwyn pointed at it, poised himself, and, with the long, overhand, straight throw of a trained ball player, sent the grenade like a bullet at the rock.
There came a blinding flash, a stunning, clean-cut report--but what the others took to be a vast column of black smoke was really a pillar of dust--all that was left of the rock. And this slowly floated, settling like mist over the waves, leaving nothing where the rock had been.
"I think," said Edgerton Lawn, wiping the starting perspiration from his forehead, "that you have made good, Captain Selwyn. Dense or bulk, your Chaosite and impact primer seem to do the business; and I think I may say that the Lawn Nitro-Powder Company is ready to do business, too. Can you come to town to-morrow? It"s merely a matter of figures and signatures now, if you say so. It is entirely up to you."
But Selwyn only laughed. He looked at Austin.
"I suppose," said Edgerton Lawn good-naturedly, "that you intend to make us sit up and beg; or do you mean to absorb us?"
But Selwyn said: "I want more time on this thing. I want to know what it does to the interior of loaded sh.e.l.ls and in fixed ammunition when it is stored for a year. I want to know whether it is necessary to use a solvent after firing it in big guns. As a bursting charge I"m practically satisfied with it; but time is required to know how it acts on steel in storage or on the bores of guns when exploded as a propelling charge. Meanwhile," turning to Lawn, "I"m tremendously obliged to you for coming--and for your offer. You see how it is, don"t you? I couldn"t risk taking money for a thing which might, at the end, prove dear at any price."
"I cheerfully accept that risk," insisted young Lawn; "I am quite ready to do all the worrying, Captain Selwyn."
But Selwyn merely shook his head, repeating: "You see how it is, don"t you?"
"I see that you possess a highly developed conscience," said Edgerton Lawn, laughing; "and when I tell you that we are more than willing to take every chance of failure--"