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Bent Twig

<h2 id="id01005" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXII</h2> <h5 id="id01006">A GRATEFUL CARTHAGINIAN</h5> Arnold Smith put another lump of sugar on his saucer, poured out a very liberal allowance of rum into his tea, and reached for a sandwich, balancing the cup and saucer with a deftness out of keeping with his long, ungraceful loose-jointedness. He remarked in an indifferent tone to Sylvia, back of the exquisitely appointed tea-tray: "I don't say anything because I haven't the least idea what you are talking about. Who was Capua, anyhow?" Sylvia broke into a peal of laughter which rang like a silver chime through the vine-shaded, airy spaces of the pergola. Old Mr. Sommerville, nosing about in his usual five-o'clock quest, heard her and came across the stretch of sunny lawn to investigate. "Oh, here's tea!" he remarked on seeing Arnold, lounging, white-flanneled, over his cup. He spoke earnestly, as was his custom when eating was in question, and Sylvia served him earnestly and carefully, with an instant harmonious response to his mood, putting in exactly the right amount of rum and sugar to suit his taste, and turning the slim-legged "curate's assistant" so that his favorite sandwiches were nearest him. "You spoil the old gentlemen, Sylvia," commented Arnold, evidently caring very little whether she did or not. "She spoils everybody," returned Mr. Sommerville, tasting his tea complacently; "'c'est son métier.' She has an uncanny instinct for suiting everybody's taste." Sylvia smiled brightly at him, exactly the brilliant smile which suited her brilliant, frank face and clear, wide-open eyes. Under her smile she was saying to herself, "If that's so, I wonder—not that I care at all—but I really wonder why you don't like me." Sylvia was encountering for the first time this summer a society guided by tradition and formula, but she was not without excellent preparation for almost any contact with her fellow-beings, a preparation which in some ways served her better than that more conscious preparation of young ladies bred up from childhood to sit behind tea-tables and say the right things to tea-drinkers. Association with the crude, outspoken youth at the State University had been an education in human nature, especially masculine nature, for her acute mind. Her unvarnished association with the other sex in classroom and campus had taught her, by means of certain rough knocks which more sheltered boarding-school girls never get, an accuracy of estimate as to the actual feeling of men towards the women they profess to admire unreservedly which (had he been able to conceive of it) old Mr. Sommerville would have thought nothing less than cynical. But he did not conceive of it, and now sat, mellowed by the rightness of his tea, white-haired, smooth-shaven, pink-gilled, white-waistcoated, the picture of old age at its best, as he smiled gallantly at the extremely pretty girl behind the table. Unlike Sylvia he knew exactly why he did not like her and he wasted no time in thinking about it. "What were you laughing about, so delightfully, as I came in, eh?" he asked, after the irretrievable first moment of joy in gratified appetite had gone. Sylvia had not the slightest backwardness about explaining. In fact she always took the greatest pains to be explicit with old Mr. Sommerville about the pit from which she had been digged. "Why, this visit to Aunt Victoria is like stepping into another world for me. Everything is so different from my home-life. I was just thinking, as I sat there behind all this glorious clutter," she waved a slim hand over the silver and porcelain of the tea-table, "what a change it was from setting the table one's self and washing up the dishes afterwards. That's what we always do at home. I hated it and I said to Arnold, 'I've reached Capua at last!' and he said," she stopped to laugh again, heartily, full-throated, the not-to-be-imitated laugh of genuine amusement, "he said, 'Who is Capua, anyhow?'" Mr. Sommerville laughed, but grudgingly, with an impatient shake of his white head and an uneasy look in his eyes. For several reasons he did not like to hear Sylvia laugh at Arnold. He distrusted a young lady with too keen a sense of humor, especially when it was directed towards the cultural deficiencies of a perfectly eligible young man. To an old inhabitant of the world, with Mr. Sommerville's views as to the ambitions of a moneyless young person, enjoying a single, brief fling in the world of young men with fortunes, it seemed certain that Sylvia's lack of tactful reticence about Arnold's ignorance could only be based on a feeling that Arnold's fortune was not big enough. She was simply, he thought with dismay, reserving her tact and reticence for a not-impossible bigger. His apprehensions about the fate of a bigger of his acquaintance if its owner ever fell into the hands of this altogether too well-informed young person rose to a degree which almost induced him to cry out, "Really, you rapacious young creature, Arnold's is all any girl need ask, ample, well-invested, solid…." But instead he said, "Humph! Rather a derogatory remark about your surroundings, eh?" Arnold did not understand, did not even hear, leaning back, long, relaxed, apathetic, in his great wicker-chair and rolling a cigarette with a detached air, as though his hands were not a part of him. But Sylvia heard, and understood, even to the hostility in the old gentleman's well-bred voice. "Being in Capua usually referring to the fact that the Carthaginians went to pieces that winter?" she asked. "Oh yes, of course I know that. Good gracious! I was brought up on the idea of the dangers of being in Capua. Perhaps that's why I always thought it would be such fun to get there." She spoke rebelliously. "They got everlastingly beaten by the Romans," advanced Mr. Sommerville. "Yes, but they had had one grand good time before! The Romans couldn't take that away from them! I think the Carthaginians got the best of it!" Provocative, light-hearted malice was in her sparkling face. She was thinking to herself with the reckless bravado of youth, "Well, since he insists, I'll give him some ground for distrusting my character!" Arnold suddenly emitted a great puff of smoke and a great shout of "Help! help! Molly to the rescue!" and when a little white-clad creature flitting past the door turned and brought into that quiet spot of leafy shadow the dazzling quickness of her smile, her eyes, her golden hair, he said to her nonchalantly: "Just in time to head them off. Sylvia and your grandfather were being so high-brow I was beginning to feel faint," Molly laughed flashingly. "Did Grandfather keep his end up? I bet he couldn't!" Arnold professed an entire ignorance of the relative status. "Oh, I fell off so far back I don't know who got in first. Who was this man Capua, anyhow? I'm a graduate of Harvard University and I never heard of him." "I'm a graduate of Miss Braddon's Mountain School for Girls," said Molly, "and I think it's a river." Mr. Sommerville groaned out, exaggerating a real qualm, "What my mother would have said to such ignorance, prefaced by 'I bet!' from the lips of a young lady!" "Your mother," said Molly, "would be my great-grandmother!" She disposed of him conclusively by this statement and went on: "And I'm not a young lady. Nobody is nowadays." "What are you, if a mere grandfather may venture to inquire?" asked Mr. Sommerville deferentially. "I'm a femme watt-man" said Molly, biting a large piece from a sandwich. Arnold explained to the others: "That's Parisian for a lady motor-driver; some name!" "Well, you won't be that, or anything else alive, if you go on driving your car at the rate I saw it going past the house this morning," said her grandfather. He spoke with an assumption of grandfatherly severity, but his eyes rested on her with a grandfather's adoration. "Oh, I'd die if I went under thirty-five," observed Miss Sommerville negligently. "Why, Mr. Sommerville," Arnold backed up his generation. "You can't call thirty-five per hour dangerous, not for a girl who can drive like Molly." "Oh, I'm as safe as if I were in a church," continued Molly. "I keep my mind on it. If I ever climb a telegraph-pole you can be sure it'll be because I wanted to. I never take my eye off the road, never once." "How you must enjoy the landscape," commented her grandfather. "Heavens! I don't drive a car to look at the landscape!" cried Molly, highly amused at the idea, apparently quite new to her. "Will you gratify the curiosity of the older generation once more, and tell me what you do drive a car for?" inquired old Mr. Sommerville, looking fondly at the girl's lovely face, like a pink-flushed pearl. "Why, I drive to see how fast I can go, of course," explained Molly. "The fun of it is to watch the road eaten up." "It is fascinating," Sylvia gave the other girl an unexpected reinforcement. "I've driven with Molly, and I've been actually hypnotized seeing the road vanish under the wheels." "Oh, children, children! When you reach my age," groaned Arnold, "and have eaten up as many thousand miles as I, you'll stay at home." "I've driven for three years now," asserted Molly, "and every time I buy a new car I get the craze all over again. This one I have now is a peach of an eight. I never want to drive a six again,—never! I can bring it up from a creep to—to fast enough to scare Grandfather into a fit, without changing gears at all—just on the throttle—" She broke off to ask, as at a sudden recollection, "What was it about Capua, anyhow?" She went to sit beside Sylvia, and put her arm around her shoulder in a caressing gesture, evidently familiar to her. "It wasn't about Capua at all," explained Sylvia indulgently, patting the lovely cheek, as though the other girl had been a child. "It was your grandfather finding out what a bad character I am, and how I wallow in luxury, now I have the chance." "Luxury?" inquired Molly, looking about her rather blankly. Sylvia laughed, this time with a little veiled, pensive note of melancholy, lost on the others but which she herself found very touching. "There, you see you're so used to it, you don't even know what I'm talking about!" "Never mind, Molly," Arnold reassured her. "Neither do I! Don't try to follow; let it float by, the way I do!" Miss Sommerville did not smile. She thrust out her red lips in a wistful pout, and looking down into the sugar-bowl intently, she remarked, her voice as pensive as Sylvia's own: "I wish I did! I wish I understood! I wish I were as clever as Sylvia!" As if in answer to this remark, another searcher after tea announced himself from the door—a tall, distinguished, ugly, graceful man, who took a very fine Panama hat from a very fine head of brown hair, slightly graying, and said in a rich, cultivated voice: "Am I too late for tea? I don't mind at all if it's strong." "Oh!" said Molly Sommerville, flushing and drawing away from Sylvia; "Lord!" muttered Arnold under his breath; and "Not at all. I'll make some fresh. I haven't had mine yet," said Sylvia, busying herself with the alcohol flame. "How're you, Morrison?" said Mr. Sommerville with no enthusiasm, holding out a well-kept old hand for the other to shake. Arnold stood up, reached under his chair, and pulled out a tennis racquet. "Excuse me, Morrison, won't you, if I run along?" he said. "It's not because you've come. I want a set of tennis before dinner if I can find somebody to play with me. Here, Molly, you've got your tennis shoes on already. Come along." The little beauty shook her head violently. "No … goodness no! It's too hot. And anyhow, I don't ever want to play again, since I've seen Sylvia's game." She turned to the other girl, breathing quickly. "You go, Sylvia dear. I'll make Mr. Morrison's tea for him." Sylvia hesitated a barely perceptible instant, until she saw old Mr. Sommerville's eyes fixed speculatively on her. Then she stood up with an instant, cheerful alacrity. "That's awfully good of you, Molly darling! You won't mind, will you, Mr. Morrison!" She nodded brightly to the old gentleman, to the girl who had slipped into her place, to the other man, and was off. The man she had left looked after her, as she trod with her long, light step beside the young man, and murmured, "Et vera incessu patuit dea." Molly moved a plate on the table with some vehemence. "I suppose Sylvia would understand that language." "She would, my dear Molly, and what's more, she would scorn me for using such a hackneyed quotation." To Mr. Sommerville he added, laughing, "Isn't it the quaintest combination—such radiant girlhood and her absurd book-learning!" Mr. Sommerville gave his assent to the quaintness by silence, as he rose and prepared to retreat. "Good-bye, Grandfather," said Molly with enthusiasm. * * * * * As they walked along, Arnold was saying to Sylvia with a listless appreciation: "You certainly know the last word of the game, don't you, Sylvia? I bet Morrison hasn't had a jolt like that for years." "What are you talking about?" asked Sylvia, perhaps slightly overdoing her ignorance of his meaning. "Why, it's a new thing for him, let me tell you, to have a girl jump up as soon as he comes in and delightedly leave him to another girl. And then to thank the other girl for being willing to take him off your hands,—that's more than knowing the rules,—that's art!" He laughed faintly at the recollection. "It's a new one for Morrison to meet a girl who doesn't kowtow. He's a very great personage in his line, and he can't help knowing it. The very last word on Lord-knows-what-all in the art business is what one Felix Morrison says about it. He's an eight-cylinder fascinator too, into the bargain. Mostly he makes me sore, but when I think about him straight, I wonder how he manages to keep on being as decent as he is—he's really a good enough sort!—with all the high-powered petticoats in New York burning incense. It's enough to turn the head of a hydrant. That's the hold Madrina has on him. She doesn't burn any incense. She wants all the incense there is being burned, for herself; and it keeps old Felix down in his place—keeps him hanging around too. You stick to the same method if you want to make a go of it." "I thought he wrote. I thought he did aesthetic criticisms and essays," said Sylvia, laughing aloud at Arnold's quaint advice. "Oh, he does. I guess he's chief medicine-man in his tribe all right. It's not only women who kowtow; when old man Merriman wants to know for sure whether to pay a million for a cracked Chinese vase, he always calls in Felix Morrison. Chief adviser to the predatory rich, that's one of his jobs! So you see," he came back to his first point, "it must be some jolt for the sacred F.M. to have a young lady, just a young lady, refuse to bow at the shrine. You couldn't have done a smarter trick, by heck! I've been watching you all those weeks, just too tickled for words. And I've been watching Morrison. It's been as good as a play! He can't stick it out much longer, unless I miss my guess, and I've known him ever since I was a kid. He's just waiting for a good chance to turn on the faucet and hand you a full cup of his irresistible fascination." He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and down on the tense catgut of his racquet: "What all you girls see in that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over! It gets me!" "Why in the world 'wolf-hound'?" asked Sylvia. "Oh, just as to his looks. He has that sort of tired, dignified, deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes would be phosphorescent at night too. They are that kind; don't you know, when you strike a match in the evening, how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look so soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards—no, Lord no! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like any dog that ever lived—first cousin to a fish, I should say." Sylvia laughed. "Why not make it grizzly bear, to take in the rest of the animal kingdom?" "No," persisted Arnold. "Now I've thought of it, I mean fish, a great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep pool and won't rise to any ordinary fly." He made a brain-jolting change of metaphor and went on: "The plain truth, and it's not so low-down as it seems, is that a big fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix. It has to be that way! He hasn't got much of his own, and his tastes are some—" "Molly must be sitting in the front row, then," commented Sylvia indifferently, as though tired of the subject. They were now at the tennis-court. "Run over to the summer-house and get my racquet, will you? It's on the bench." "Yes, Molly's got plenty of money," Arnold admitted as he came back, his accent implying some other lack which he forgot to mention, absorbed as he at once became in coping with his adversary's strong, swift serve. The change in him, as he began seriously to play, was startling, miraculous. His slack loose-jointedness stiffened into quick, flexible accuracy, his lounging, flaccid air disappeared in a glow of concentrated vigorous effort. The bored good-nature in his eyes vanished, burned out by a stern, purposeful intensity. He was literally and visibly another person. Sylvia played her best, which was excellent, far better than that of any other girl in the summer colony. She had been well trained by her father and her gymnasium instructor, and played with an economy of effort delightful to see; but she was soon driven by her opponent's tiger-like quickness into putting out at once her every resource. There, in the slowly fading light of the long mountain afternoon, the two young Anglo-Saxons poured out their souls in a game with the immemorial instinct of their race, fierce, grim, intent, every capacity of body and will-power brought into play, everything else in the world forgotten…. For some time they were on almost equal terms, and then Sylvia became aware that her adversary was getting the upper hand of her. She had, however, no idea what the effort was costing him, until after a blazing fire of impossibly rapid volleys under which she went down to defeat, she stopped, called out, "Game and set!" and added in a generous tribute, "Say, you can play!" Then she saw that his face was almost purple, his eyes bloodshot, and his breath came in short, gasping pants. "Good gracious, what's the matter!" she cried, running towards him in alarm. She was deeply flushed herself, but her eyes were as clear as clear water, and she ran with her usual fawn-like swiftness. Arnold dropped on the bench, waving her a speechless reassurance. With his first breath he said, "Gee! but you can hit it up, for a girl!" "What's the matter with you?" Sylvia asked again, sitting down beside him. "Nothing! Nothing!" he panted. "My wind! It's confoundedly short." He added a moment later, "It's tobacco—this is the sort of time the cigarettes get back at you, you know!" The twilight dropped slowly about them like a thin, clear veil. He thrust out his feet, shapely in their well-made white shoes, surveyed them with dissatisfaction, and added with moody indifference: "And cocktails too. They play the dickens with a fellow's wind." Sylvia said nothing for a moment, looking at him by no means admiringly. Her life in the State University had brought her into such incessant contact with young men that the mere fact of sitting beside one in the twilight left her unmoved to a degree which Mr. Sommerville's mother would have found impossible to imagine. When she spoke, it was with an impatient scorn of his weakness, which might have been felt by a fellow-athlete: "What in the world makes you do it, then?" "Why not?" he said challengingly. "You've just said why not—it spoils your tennis. It must spoil your polo. Was that what spoiled your baseball in college? You'd be twice the man if you wouldn't." "Oh, what's the use?" he said, an immense weariness in his voice. "What's the use of anything, if you are going to use that argument?" said Sylvia, putting him down conclusively. He spoke with a sudden heartfelt simplicity, "Damn 'f I know, Sylvia." For the first time in all the afternoon, his voice lost its tonelessness, and rang out with the resonance of sincerity. She showed an unflattering surprise. "Why, I didn't know you ever thought about such things." He looked at her askance, dimly amused. "High opinion you have of me!" She looked annoyed at herself and said with a genuine good-will in her voice, "Why, Arnold, you know I've always liked you." "You like me, but you don't think much of me," he diagnosed her, "and you show your good sense." He looked up at the picturesque white house, spreading its well-proportioned bulk on the top of the terraced hillside before them. "I hope Madrina is looking out of a window and sees us here, our heads together in the twilight. You've guessed, I suppose, that she had you come on here for my benefit. She thinks she's tried everything else,—now it's her idea to get me safely married. She'd have one surprise, wouldn't she, if she could hear what we're saying!" "Well, it would be a good thing for you," remarked Sylvia, as entirely without self-consciousness as though they were discussing the tennis game. He was tickled by her coolness. "Well, Madrina sure made a mistake when she figured on you!" he commented ironically. And then, not having been subjected to the cool, hardy conditions which caused Sylvia's present clear-headedness, he felt his blood stirred to feel her there, so close, so alive, so young, so beautiful in the twilight. He leaned towards her and spoke in a husky voice, "See here, Sylvia, why don't you try it!" "Oh, nonsense!" said the girl, not raising her voice at all, not stirring. "You don't care a bit for me." "Yes, I do! I've always liked you!" he said, not perceiving till after the words were out of his mouth that he had repeated her own phrase. She laughed to hear it, and he drew back, his faint stirring of warmth dashed, extinguished. "The fact is, Sylvia," he said, "you're too nice a girl to fall in love with." "What a horrid thing to say!" she exclaimed. "About you?" he defended himself. "I mean it as a compliment." "About falling in love," she said. "Oh!" he said blankly, evidently not at all following her meaning. "What time is it?" she now inquired, and on hearing the hour, "Oh, we'll be late to dress for dinner," she said in concern, rising and ascending the marble steps to the terrace next above them. He came after her, long, loose-jointed, ungraceful. He was laughing. "Do you realize that I've proposed marriage to you and you've turned me down?" he said. "No such a thing!" she said, as lightly as he. "It's the nearest I ever came to it!" he averred. She continued to flit up the terraces before him, her voice rippling with amusement dropping down on him through the dusk. "Well, you'll have to come nearer than that, if you ever want to make a go of it!" she called over her shoulder. Upon which note this very modern conversation ended. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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