The Younger Set Part 57

She looked at the column of flas.h.i.+ng water, nodding silent a.s.sent.

They moved on, the girl curiously reserved, non-communicative, head slightly lowered; the man vague-eyed, thoughtful, pacing slowly at her side. Behind them their long shadows trailed across the brilliant gra.s.s.

Traversing the grove which encircled the newly clipped lawn, now fragrant with sun-crisped gra.s.s-tips left in the wake of the mower, he glanced up at the pretty mermaid mother cuddling her tiny offspring against her throat. Across her face a bar of pink sunlight fell, making its contour exquisite.

"Plunkitt tells me that they really laugh at each other in the moonlight," he said.

She glanced up; then away from him:

"You seem to be enamoured of the moonlight," she said.

"I like to prowl in it."

"Alone?"

"Sometimes."

"And--at other times?"

He laughed: "Oh, I'm past that, as you reminded me a moment ago."

"Then you _did_ misunderstand me!"

"Why, no--"

"Yes, you did! But I supposed you knew."

"Knew what, Eileen?" "What I meant."

"You meant that I am _hors de concours_."

"I didn't!"

"But I am, child. I was, long ago."

She looked up: "Do you really think that, Captain Selwyn? If you do--I am glad."

He laughed outright. "You are glad that I'm safely past the spooning age?" he inquired, moving forward.

She halted: "Yes. Because I'm quite sure of you if you are; I mean that I can always keep you for myself. Can't I?"

She was smiling and her eyes were clear and fearless, but there was a wild-rose tint on her cheeks which deepened a little as he turned short in his tracks, gazing straight at her.

"You wish to keep me--for yourself?" he repeated, laughing.

"Yes, Captain Selwyn."

"Until you marry. Is that it, Eileen?"

"Yes, until I marry."

"And then we'll let each other go; is that it?"

"Yes. But I think I told you that I would never marry. Didn't I?"

"Oh! Then ours is to be a lifelong and anti-sentimental contract!"

"Yes, unless _you_ marry."

"I promise not to," he said, "unless you do."

"I promise not to," she said gaily, "unless you do."

"There remains," he observed, "but one way for you and I ever to marry anybody. And as I'm _hors de concours_, even that hope is ended."

She flushed; her lips parted, but she checked what she had meant to say, and they walked forward together in silence for a while until she had made up her mind what to say and how to express it:

"Captain Selwyn, there are two things that you do which seem to me unfair. You still have, at times, that far-away, absent expression which excludes me; and when I venture to break the silence, you have a way of answering, 'Yes, child,' and 'No, child'--as though you were inattentive, and I had not yet become an adult. _That_ is my first complaint! ... _What_ are you laughing at? It is true; and it confuses and hurts me; because I _know_ I am intelligent enough and old enough to--to be treated as a woman!--a woman attractive enough to be reckoned with! But I never seem to be wholly so to you."

The laugh died out as she ended; for a moment they stood there, confronting one another.

"Do you imagine," he said in a low voice, "that I do not know all that?"

"I don't know whether you do. For all your friends.h.i.+p--for all your liking and your kindness to me--somehow--I--I don't seem to stand with you as other women do; I don't seem to stand their chances."

"What chances?"

"The--the consideration; you don't call any other woman 'child,' do you?

You don't constantly remind other women of the difference in your ages, do you? You don't _feel_ with other women that you are--as you please to call it--_hors de concours_--out of the running. And somehow, with me, it humiliates. Because even if I--if I am the sort of a girl who never means to marry, you--your att.i.tude seems to take away the possibility of my changing my mind; it dictates to me, giving me no choice, no liberty, no personal freedom in the matter... . It's as though you considered me somehow utterly out of the question--radically unthinkable as a woman. And you a.s.sume to take for granted that I also regard you as--as _hors de concours_... . Those are my grievances, Captain Selwyn... .

And I _don't_ regard you so. And I--and it troubles me to be excluded--to be found wanting, inadequate in anything that a woman should be. I know that you and I have no desire to marry each other--but--but please don't make the reason for it either your age or my physical immaturity or intellectual inexperience."

Another of those weather-stained seats of Georgia marble stood embedded under the trees near where she had halted; and she seated herself, outwardly composed, and inwardly a little frightened at what she had said.

As for Selwyn, he remained where he had been standing on the lawn's velvet edge; and, raising her eyes again, her heart misgave her that she had wantonly strained a friends.h.i.+p which had been all but perfect; and now he was moving across the path toward her--a curious look in his face which she could not interpret. She looked up as he approached and stretched out her hand:

"Forgive me, Captain Selwyn," she said. "I _am_ a child--a spoiled one; and I have proved it to you. Will you sit here beside me and tell me very gently what a fool I am to risk straining the friends.h.i.+p dearest to me in the whole world? And will you fix my penance?"

"You have fixed it yourself," he said.

"How?"

"By the challenge of your womanhood."

"I did not challenge--"

"No; you defended. You are right. The girl I cared for--the girl who was there with me on Brier Water--so many, many centuries ago--the girl who, years ago, leaned there beside me on the sun-dial--has become a memory."

"What do you mean?" she asked faintly.