The girl replied that she liked Lord Willowmere. She might have added that she was prepared to like anything in trousers that would give her a few hours off.
"Do you think," said her mother, "you can be trusted to play in the social cabaret all next winter, and then marry Willowmere?"
Said Cecil: "I am perfectly ready to marry anybody before luncheon, if you will let me."
"I do not wish you to feel that way."
"Mother, I do! All I want is to be let alone long enough to learn something for myself."
"What do you not know? What have you not learned? What accomplishment do you lack, little daughter? What is it you wish?"
The girl glanced out of the window. A young and extremely well-built man went striding down the avenue about his business. He looked a little like a man she had seen playing ball on the Harvard team a year ago. She sighed unconsciously.
"I've learned about everything there is to learn, I suppose… Except – where do men go when they walk so busily about their business?"
"Down town," said her mother, laughing.
"What do they do there?"
"A million things concerning millions."
"But I don't see how there's anything left for them to do after their education is completed. What is there left for me to do, except to marry and have a few children?"
"What do you want to do?"
"Nothing… I'd like to have something to do which would make me look busy and make me walk rather fast – like that young man who was hurrying down town all by himself. Then I'd like to be let alone while I'm busy with my own affairs."
"When you marry Willowmere you'll be busy enough." She might have added: "And lonely enough."
"I'll be occupied in telling others how to busy themselves with my affairs. But there won't be anything for me to do, will there?"
"Yes, dear child; it will be one steady fight to better a good position. It will afford you constant exercise."
The tall young girl bit her lip and shook her pretty head in silence. She felt instinctively that she knew how to do that. But that was not the exercise she wanted. She looked out into the February sunshine and saw the blue shadows on the snow and the sidewalks dark and wet, and the little gutter arabs throwing snow-balls, and a yellow pup barking blissfully. And, apropos of nothing at all, she suddenly remembered how she had run away when she was nine; and a rush of blind desire surged within her. What it meant she did not know, did not trouble to consider, but it stirred her until the soft fire burned in her cheeks, and left her twisting her white fingers, lips parted, staring across the wintry park into the blue tracery of trees. To Miss Cassillis adolescence came late.
They sang Le Donne Curiose at the opera that evening; she sat in her father's box; numbers of youthful, sleek-headed, white-shirted young men came between the acts. She talked to all with the ardor of the young and unsatisfied; and, mentally and spiritually still unsatisfied, buried in fur, she was whirled back through snowy streets to the great grey mansion of her nativity, and the silence of her white-hung chamber.
All through February the preparatory régime continued, with preliminary canters at theatre and opera, informal party practice, and trial dinners. Always she gave herself completely to every moment with a wistful and unquenched faith, eager novice in her quest of what was lacking in her life; ardent enthusiast in her restless searching for the remedy. And, unsatisfied, lingering mentally by the door of Chance, lest she miss somewhere the magic that satisfies and quiets – lest the gates of Opportunity swing open after she had turned away – reluctantly she returned to the companionship of her own solitary mind and undeveloped soul, and sat down to starve with them in spirit, wondering wherein might lie the reason for this new hunger that assailed her, mind and body.
She ran up her private flag the next winter, amid a thousand other gay and flaunting colours breaking out all over town. The newspapers roared a salute to the wealthiest debutante; and an enthusiastic press, not yet housebroken but agile with much exercise in leaping and fawning, leaped now about the debutante's slippers, grinning, slavering and panting. Later, led by instinct and its Celebrated Nose, it bounded toward young Lord Willowmere, jumped and fawned about him, slightly soiling him, until in midwinter the engagement it had announced was corroborated, and a million shop-girls and old women were in a furor.
He was a ruddy-faced young man who wore his bowler hat toward the back of his head, a small, pointed moustache, and who walked always as though he were shod in riding boots.
He would have made a healthy studgroom for any gentleman's stable. Person and intellect were always thoroughly scrubbed as with saddle-soap. Had he been able to afford it, his stables would have been second to none in England.
Soon he would be able to afford it.
To his intimates, including his fiancée, he was known as "Stirrups." All day long he was in the saddle or on the box, every evening at the Cataract Club or at a cabaret. Between times he called upon Miss Cassillis – usually finding her out. When he found her not at home, he called elsewhere, very casually.
Two continents were deeply stirred over the impending alliance.
III
Young Jones, in wildest Florida, had never heard of it or of her, or of her income. His own fortune amounted to six hundred dollars, and he had been born in Brooklyn, and what his salary might be only he and the Smithsonian Institution knew.
He was an industrious young man, no better than you or I, accepting thankfully every opportunity for mischief which the Dead Lake region afforded. No opportunities of that kind ever presenting themselves in that region, he went once a month to Miami in the Orange Puppy, and drank too many swizzles and so forth, et cetera.
Having accomplished this, he returned to the wharf, put the Orange Puppy into commission, hoisted sail, and squared away for Matanzas Inlet, finding himself too weak-minded to go home by a more direct route.
He had been on his monthly pilgrimage to Miami, and was homeward bound noisily, using his auxiliary power so that silence should not descend upon him too abruptly. He had been, for half an hour now, immersed in a species of solitaire known as The Idiot's Delight, when he caught himself cheating himself, and indignantly scattered the pack to the four winds – three of which, however, were not blowing. One card, the deuce of hearts, fluttered seaward like a white butterfly. Beyond it he caught sight of another white speck, shining like a gull's breast.
It was a big yacht steaming in from the open sea; and her bill of lading included Miss Cassillis and Willowmere. But Jones could not know that. So he merely blinked at the distant Chihuahua, yawned, flipped the last card overboard, and swung the Orange Puppy into the inlet, which brimmed rather peacefully, the tide being nearly at flood.
Far away on the deck of the Chihuahua the quick-fire racket of Jones's auxiliary was amazingly audible. Miss Cassillis, from her deck-chair, could see the Orange Puppy, a fleck of glimmering white across a sapphire sea. How was she to divine that one Delancy Jones was aboard of her? All she saw when the two boats came near each other was a noisy little craft progressing toward the lagoon, emitting an earsplitting racket; and a tall, lank young man clad in flannels lounging at the tiller and smoking a cigarette.
Around her on the snowy deck were disposed the guests of her parents, mostly corpulent, swizzles at every elbow, gracefully relaxing after a morning devoted to arduous idleness. The Victor on deck, which had furnished the incentive to her turkey-trotting with Lord Willowmere, was still exuding a syncopated melody. Across the water, Jones heard it and stood looking at the great yacht as the Orange Puppy kicked her way through the intensely blue water under an azure sky.
Willowmere lounged over to the rail and gazed wearily at the sand dunes and palmettos. Presently Miss Cassillis slipped from her deck-chair to her white-shod feet, and walked over to where he stood. He said something about the possibilities of "havin' a bit of shootin'," with a vague wave of his highly-coloured hand toward the palmetto forests beyond the lagoon.
If