Majorie Daw | Page 8

How cool it must be down
there! I long for the salt smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking
his cheroot on the piazza. I send you and Miss Daw off on afternoon
rambles along the beach. Sometimes I let you stroll with her under the
elms in the moonlight, for you are great friends by this time, I take it,
and see each other every day. I know your ways and your manners!
Then I fall into a truculent mood, and would like to destroy somebody.
Have you noticed anything in the shape of a lover hanging around the
colonel Lares and Penates? Does that lieutenant of the horse-marines or
that young Stillwater parson visit the house much? Not that I am pining
for news of them, but any gossip of the kind would be in order. I
wonder, Ned, you don't fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to do it
myself. Speaking of photographs, couldn't you manage to slip one of
her cartes-de-visite from her album--she must have an album, you
know--and send it to me? I will return it before it could be missed.

That's a good fellow! Did the mare arrive safe and sound? It will be a
capital animal this autumn for Central Park.
Oh--my leg? I forgot about my leg. It's better.
VII.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMIMG.
August 20, 1872.
You are correct in your surmises. I am on the most friendly terms with
our neighbors. The colonel and my father smoke their afternoon cigar
together in our sitting-room or on the piazza opposite, and I pass an
hour or two of the day or the evening with the daughter. I am more and
more struck by the beauty, modesty, and intelligence of Miss Daw.
You asked me why I do not fall in love with her. I will be frank, Jack; I
have thought of that. She is young, rich, accomplished, uniting in
herself more attractions, mental and personal, than I can recall in any
girl of my acquaintance; but she lacks the something that would be
necessary to inspire in me that kind of interest. Possessing this
unknown quality, a woman neither beautiful nor wealthy nor very
young could bring me to her feet. But not Miss Daw. If we were
shipwrecked together on an uninhabited island--let me suggest a
tropical island, for it costs no more to be picturesque--I would build her
a bamboo hut, I would fetch her bread-fruit and cocoanuts, I would fry
yams for her, I would lure the ingenuous turtle and make her
nourishing soups, but I wouldn't make love to her--not under eighteen
months. I would like to have her for a sister, that I might shield her and
counsel her, and spend half my income on old threadlace and
camel's-hair shawls. (We are off the island now.) If such were not my
feeling, there would still be an obstacle to my loving Miss Daw. A
greater misfortune could scarcely befall me than to love her. Flemming,
I am about to make a revelation that will astonish you. I may be all
wrong in my premises and consequently in my conclusions; but you
shall judge.
That night when I returned to my room after the croquet party at the
Daw's, and was thinking over the trivial events of the evening, I was
suddenly impressed by the air of eager attention with which Miss Daw
had followed my account of your accident. I think I mentioned this to
you. Well, the next morning, as I went to mail my letter, I overtook
Miss Daw on the road to Rye, where the post- office is, and

accompanied her thither and back, an hour's walk. The conversation
again turned to you, and again I remarked that inexplicable look of
interest which had lighted up her face the previous evening. Since then,
I have seen Miss Daw perhaps ten times, perhaps oftener, and on each
occasion I found that when I was not speaking of you, or your sister, or
some person or place associated with you, I was not holding her
attention. She would be absent-minded, her eyes would wander away
from me to the sea, or to some distant object in the landscape; her
fingers would play with the leaves of a book in a way that convinced
me she was not listening. At these moments if I abruptly changed the
theme--I did it several times as an experiment--and dropped some
remark about my friend Flemming, then the sombre blue eyes would
come back to me instantly.
Now, is not this the oddest thing in the world? No, not the oddest. The
effect which you tell me was produced on you by my casual mention of
an unknown girl swinging in a hammock is