"They must be brought to help themselves!" Mrs. Heth was saying.
"Wholesale, thoughtless generosity is demoralizing to poverty. It is sheer ruination to their moral fibre."
"Promiscuous charity!--ruination! Just what I always say," chirped Willie. "Look at ancient Rome, ma"am. Began giving away corn to the poor, and, by gad!--she fell!"...
"Delightful! I see I shall like it here," Mr. Canning was observing--and was there perceptible the slightest thawing in his somewhat formidable manner?... "I too," said he, "have dwelt in Arcady."
The girl looked over the s.p.a.ces, a little smile in her eyes.
"Ah, then you didn"t need to be told that the sandman comes early there."
"But not, I think, when the moon shines bright--and the simple amus.e.m.e.nts you speak of seem to be waiting? Surely games in the evening are not altogether forbidden, or does my memory of the place deceive me?"
"You seem to remember it perfectly. But I thought your complaint was that there was nothing at all amusing to do in Arcady."
"Ah," said Mr. Canning, "but I"m having my second thoughts now."
She had given him a third, uptilting look with her speech; and now it was as if the great eligible had seen her for the first time. If the gaze of his handsome eyes became somewhat frank, this girl had been fashioned to stand all scrutiny victoriously. A mode which defined the figure with some truthfulness held no terrors for her; rather the contrary. Her skin was fine and fair as a lily, with an undertone of warmth, dawn pink on the cheek; the whiteness of her neck showed an engaging tracery of blue. Her ma.s.s of hair, of an ashy dull gold, would have been too showy above a plain face; but the case was otherwise with her. Her mouth, which was not quite flawless but something better, in especial allured the gaze; so did her eyes, of a dusky blue, oddly shaped, and fringed with the gayest lashes ...
"Besides," added the man, looking down at her with a certain lightening in his gaze, "as I remember, I did not say that there was nothing amusing to do. I merely, as a stranger, came to you begging some guidance on the point."
"I see. But I very much doubt my ability to guide you in that way, Mr.
Canning--"
"I can only observe that you"ve thrown out a number of perfectly ripping suggestions already--walking on the piazza, for example. Mightn"t we steal that diversion from afternoon temporarily, don"t you think?
Perhaps Mrs. Heth would agree to pursue the missing breeze so far?"
"That would be nice," said Carlisle.
You could distinctly hear his thundering feet now....
Strolling for four was agreed upon, and that simple afternoon amus.e.m.e.nt started. But, arriving at the piazza, the dowager discovered that, after all, the night air was just a little cool for her, and turned back, not without some beaming. She mentioned the Blue Parlor as her port of call, where smoking was forbidden. Willie, doing his duty as he saw it, dropped his cigar into a bra.s.s repository. He had faults like the rest of us, had Willie, but his deathless loyalty deserved a monument in a park.
Carlisle and Mr. Canning strolled on alone. She walked outwardly serene as the high-riding moon, but inwardly with a quickening sense of triumph, hardly clouded at all now. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had fallen out....
Many eyes had followed this shining pair as they quitted the common gathering-place. She, as we have seen, was inviting as a spectacle. He, to the n.o.bodies, was simply one of the sights of the place, like the Fort. And his distinguished House was still a small one, at that, not yet arrived where another generation would unfailingly put it. If the grandfather of Hugo Canning had founded the family, financially speaking, it was his renowned father who had raised it so fast and far, doubling and redoubling the Canning fortune with a velocity by no means unprecedented in the eighties and nineties. To-day there were not many names better known in the world of affairs, in the rarer social alt.i.tudes, even in the sh.o.r.e-hotels of the provinces....
And the son and heir of the name and fortune, who now trod the Beach piazza with Miss Carlisle Heth, was obviously more than many sons of wealth, much more than a mere trousered incident to millions. This one saw in the first glance at his Olympian bearing; but Carlisle Heth knew more than that. Upon this young man the enterprising vehicles of modern history had, long since, conferred an individual celebrity. Often had the Sunday editors told their "public" of his exploits in the sporting and social realms, as they called them; not rarely had journals of a more gossipy character paragraphed him smartly, using their asterisks to remove all doubt as to who was meant. Before such an evening as this had ever crossed her maiden"s dreams, Carlisle Heth had read of Hugo Canning....
It was a bad throat, a G.o.d-given touch of bronchitis or whatnot, that had sent the great young man south. This was known through Willie Kerr, and other private sources. Also, that he would remain with his Payne cousins through the following week; and in December might possibly return from the Carolinas or Florida for a few days" riding with the Hunt Club. Meantime he was here: and it was but Sat.u.r.day, mid-evening, and a whole beautiful Sunday lay ahead....
From the piazza, after a turn or two, Miss Heth and Mr. Canning sauntered on to a little summer-house, which stood on the hotel front-lawn, not far from the piazza end. She had hesitated when he commended the pretty bower; but it was really the discreetest spot imaginable, under the public eye in all directions, and undoubtedly commanding a perfect view of the moonlight on the water, precisely as he pointed out.
In this retreat, "What a heavenly night!" exclaimed Miss Heth.
Canning, still standing, looked abroad upon a scene of dim beauty, gentle airs, and faint bright light. "Now that you say it," he replied, "it is. But depend on it, I should never have admitted it quarter of an hour ago."
"Oh! But isn"t it rather tedious to deny what"s so beautifully plain?"
"Should you say that tedious is the word? A better man than I denied his Lord."
"Yes," said Carlisle, not absolutely dead-sure of the allusion, "but he was frightened, wasn"t he, or something?"
"And I was lonely. Loneliness beats fear hollow for making the world look out of whack."
"Doesn"t it? And is there a lonesomer place on the globe than a summer resort out of season?"
"But we were speaking of fifteen minutes ago, were we not?" said Canning, and sat down beside her on the rustic bench.
The walls of this little summer-house were largely myth, and lattice for the rest. Through the interstices the dim brightness of the moon misted in, and the mult.i.tudinous rays from the hotel. There reached them the murmur of voices, the languorous lap of water. A serene and rea.s.suring scene it surely was; there was no menace in the night"s silvern calmness, no shadow of stalking trouble....
Carlisle imagined Mr. Canning to be capable of a rapid advance at his desire, and was opposed on principle to such a course of events. Still, she was saying, a moment or two later:
"And in the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road--I suppose you never feel lonely there?"
"Why fort, if one might know?"
"I"ve been told that you were awfully well barricaded there, prepared to stand any sort of siege."
Canning seemed quite amused. He declared, on the contrary, that neglect and unpopularity were his portion in a strange land.
"I"m an invalid on sick-leave," said he, "and my orders are to go to bed. Please don"t smile, for it"s all quite true ..."
He appeared to develop a certain interest in the moonlit talk. He proceeded in a voice and manner no longer purely civil:
"And, to bare my soul to you, I"m no fonder of being lonely than another man.... Do you know that, but for Kerr, you"re my one acquaintance in all this part of the world? What shall we say of that? I sit at dinner, consumed by blue devils. I emerge, and behold, you walk across the lobby. Haven"t I some right to feel that the G.o.ds are with me even at the Beach?"
Perchance she might have given him some information there, but instead she laughed musically.
"The G.o.d of the pretty speeches, at any rate! Must I tell you that you didn"t look quite overjoyed when dear Willie came dragging you up?"
"I"ve no doubt I looked all sorts of ways, for I"d never felt more unfit for any society, including my own. The more is my debt to you for chasing my devils away.... But perhaps I owe you no thanks after all, as one guesses that you do these little services for others without any particular effort."
Carlisle glanced at him, smiling a little from her dusky eyes.
"Your experience is that most people find it a great effort to speak pleasantly to you, I suppose?"
"Again I point out to you that our talk is not of most people, but of you."
"Oh! And is there something particularly original about me? This grows exciting."
"I, for one, think that beauty is always original," said Canning, with sufficient impersonality, but no more.... "Still, we know, of course, that unaided it cannot drive the blues of others very far."
"After the sugar-coating comes the pill. Tell me in what way I have been deficient."
"Ah, that"s yet to learn. To be charming by habit is an agreeable thing; but you haven"t convinced me yet, you know, that you know how to be kind."
Her lashes fell before his masculine gaze; she did not answer. About them was the sweet hush of the night. She was aware that he had moved nearer upon their bench; aware, too, of a faster beating of her heart.
And then, quite suddenly, a new voice spoke, so close that both started sharply; a rather shy voice, yet one possessed of a certain vivid quality of life.