The Firing Line. Chambers Robert William
a noble living growth of live oak, cedar, magnolia, and palmetto. And on these courts a very gay company of young people in white were playing or applauding the players while the snowy balls flew across the nets and the resonant blows of the bats rang out.
And first Mr. Cardross presented Hamil to his handsome married daughter, Mrs. Acton Carrick, a jolly, freckled, young matron who showed her teeth when she smiled and shook hands like her father; and then he was made known to the youngest daughter, Cecile Cardross, small, plump, and sun-tanned, with ruddy hair and mischief in every feature.
There was, also, a willowy Miss Staines and a blond Miss Anan, and a very young Mr. Anan—a brother—and a grave and gaunt Mr. Gatewood and a stout Mr. Ellison, and a number of others less easy to remember.
"This wholesale introduction business is always perplexing," observed Cardross; "but they'll all remember you, and after a time you'll begin to distinguish them from the shrubbery. No"—as Mrs. Carrick asked Hamil if he cared to play—"he would rather look on this time, Jessie. Go ahead; we are not interrupting you; where is Shiela—"
And Hamil, chancing to turn, saw her, tennis-bat tucked under one bare arm, emerging from the jungle path; and at the same instant she caught sight of him. Both little chalked shoes stood stockstill—for a second only—then she came forward, leisurely, continuing to eat the ripe guava with which she had been occupied.
Cardross, advancing, said: "This is Mr. Hamil, dearest; and," to the young man: "My daughter Shiela."
She nodded politely.
"Now I've got to go, Shiela," continued Cardross. "Hamil, you'll amuse yourself, won't you, until I return after luncheon? Shiela, Mr. Hamil doesn't care to play tennis; so if you'll find out what he does care to do—" He saluted the young people gaily and started across the lawn where a very black boy with a chair stood ready to convey him to the village and across the railroad tracks to that demure little flower-embowered cottage the interior of which presents such an amazing contrast to the exterior.
CHAPTER VI
ARMISTICE
The young girl beside him had finished her guava, and now, idly swinging her tennis-bat, stood watching the games in the sunken courts below.
"Please don't consider me a burden," he said. "I would be very glad to sit here and watch you play."
"I have been playing, thank you."
"But you won't let me interfere with anything that—"
"No, Mr. Hamil, I won't let you interfere—with anything."
She stood swinging her bat, apparently preoccupied with her own thoughts—like a very grave goddess, he thought, glancing at her askance—a very young goddess, immersed in celestial reverie far beyond mortal comprehension.
"Do you like guavas?" she inquired. And, closing her own question: "But you had better not until you are acclimated. Do you feel very sleepy, Mr. Hamil?"
"No, I don't," he said.
"Oh! You ought to conform to tradition. There's a particularly alluring hammock on the veranda."
"To get rid of me is it necessary to make me take a nap?" he protested.
"So you refuse to go to sleep?"
"I certainly do."
She sighed and tucked the tennis-bat under her left arm. "Come," she said, moving forward, "my father will ask me what I have done to amuse you, and I had better hunt up something to tell him about. You'll want to see the groves of course—"
"Yes, but I'm not going to drag you about with me—"
"Come," she repeated; and as he stood his ground obstinately: "Please?"—with a rising inflection hinting at command.
"Why on earth don't you play tennis and let me sit and watch you?" he asked, joining and keeping step with her.
"Why do you ask a woman for reasons, Mr. Hamil?"
"It's too bad to spoil your morning—"
"I know it; so in revenge I'm going to spoil yours. Our trip is called 'Seeing Florida,' so you must listen to your guide very attentively. This is a pomelo grove—thank you," to the negro who opened the gate—"here you see blossoms and ripe fruit together on the same tree. A few palmettos have been planted here for various agricultural reasons. This is a camphor bush"—touching it with her bat—"the leaves when crushed in the palm exhale a delightful fragr—"
"Calypso!"
She turned toward him with coldest composure. "That never happened, Mr. Hamil."
"No," he said, "it never did."
A slight colour remained in his face; hers was cool enough.
"Did you think it happened?" she asked. He shook his head. "No," he repeated seriously, "I know that it never happened."
She said: "If you are quite sure it never happened, there is no harm in pretending it did.... What was it you called me?"
"I could never remember, Miss Cardross—unless you tell me."
"Then I'll tell you—if you are quite sure you don't remember. You called me 'Calypso.'"
And looking up he surprised the rare laughter in her eyes.
"You are rather nice after all," she said, "or is it only that I have you under such rigid discipline? But it was very bad taste in you to recall so crudely what never occurred—until I gave you the liberty to do it. Don't you think so?"
"Yes, I do," he said. "I've made two exhibitions of myself since I knew you—"
"One, Mr. Hamil. Please recollect that I am scarcely supposed to know how many exhibitions of yourself you may have made before we were formally presented."
She stood still under a tree which drooped like a leaf-tufted umbrella, and she said, swinging her racket: "You will always have me at a disadvantage. Do you know it?"
"That is utterly impossible!"
"Is it? Do you mean it?"
"I do with all my heart—"
"Thank you; but do you mean it with all your logical intelligence, too?"
"Yes, of course I do."
She stood, head partly averted, one hand caressing the smooth, pale-yellow fruit which hung in heavy clusters around her. And all around her, too, the delicate white blossoms poured out fragrance, and the giant swallow-tail butterflies in gold and black fluttered and floated among the blossoms or clung to them as though stupefied by their heavy sweetness.
"I wish we had begun—differently," she mused.
"I don't wish it."
She said, turning on him almost fiercely: "You persisted in talking to me in the boat; you contrived to make yourself interesting without being offensive—I don't know how you managed it! And then—last night—I was not myself.... And then—that happened!"
"Could anything more innocent have happened?"
"Something far more dignified could have happened when I heard you say 'Calypso.'" She shrugged her shoulders. "It's done; we've misbehaved; and you will have to be dreadfully careful. You will, won't you? And yet I shall certainly hate you heartily if you make any difference between me and other women. Oh, dear!—Oh, dear! The whole situation is just unimportant enough to be irritating. Mr. Hamil, I don't think I care for you very much."
And as he looked at her with a troubled smile, she added:
"You must not take that declaration too literally. Can you forget—various things?"
"I don't want to, Miss Cardross. Listen: nobody could be more sweet, more simple, more natural than the girl I spoke to—I dreamed that I talked with—last night. I don't want to forget that night, or that girl. Must I?"
"Are you, in your inmost thoughts, fastidious in thinking of that girl? Is there any reservation, any hesitation?"
He said, meeting her eyes: "She is easily the nicest girl I ever met—the