The Firing Line | Page 9

the lake the elfin pageant continued, but now he could scarcely hear the music; the far cries and the hiss of the rockets came softly as the whizzing of velvet-winged moths around orange blossoms.
The January night was magnificent; he could scarcely comprehend that this languid world of sea and palm, of heavy odour and slow breezes, was his own land still. Under the spell the Occident vanished; it was the Orient--all this dreamy mirage, these dim white walls, this spice-haunted dusk, the water inlaid with stars, the fairy foliage, the dew drumming in the stillness like the sound of goblin tattooing.
Never before had he seen this enchanted Southern land which had always been as much a part of his mother-land as Northern hill and Western plain--as much his as the roaring dissonance of Broadway, or the icy silence of the tundras, or the vast tranquil seas of corn rippling mile on mile under the harvest moon of Illinois.
He halted, unquiet in the strangeness of it all, restless under its exotic beauty, conscious of the languor stealing over him--the premonition of a physical relaxation that he had never before known--that he instinctively mistrusted.
People in groups passed and repassed along the lagoon wall where, already curiously tired, he had halted beside an old bronze cannon--some ancient Spanish piece, if he could judge by the arms and arabesques covering the breech, dimly visible in the rays of a Chinese lantern.
Beyond was a private dock where two rakish power-boats lay, receiving their cargo of young men and girls--all very animated and gay under the gaudy electric lanterns strung fore and aft rainbow fashion.
He seated himself on the cannon, lingering until both boats cleared for the carnival, rushing out into the darkness like streaks of multi-coloured flame; then his lassitude increasing, he rose and sauntered toward the hotel which loomed like a white mountain afire above the dark masses of tropic trees. And again the press of the throng hemmed him in among the palms and fountains and hedges of crimson hibiscus; again the dusk grew gay with voices and the singing overtone of violins; again the suffocating scent of blossoms, too sweet and penetrating for the unacclimated, filtered through and through him, till his breath came unevenly, and the thick odours stirred in him strange senses of expectation, quickening with his pulses to a sudden prophecy.
And at the same instant he saw the girl of whom he had been thinking.
She was on the edge of a group of half a dozen or more men in evening dress, and women in filmy white--already close to him--so near that the frail stuff of her skirt brushed him, and the subtle, fresh aroma of her seemed to touch his cheek like a breath as she passed.
"Calypso," he whispered, scarcely conscious that he spoke aloud.
A swift turn of her head, eyes that looked blankly into his, and she had passed.
A sudden realisation of his bad manners left his ears tingling. What on earth had prompted him to speak? What momentary relaxation had permitted him an affront to a young girl whose attitude toward him that morning had been so admirable?
Chagrined, he turned back to seek some circling path through the dense crowd ahead; and was aware, in the darkness, of a shadowy figure entering the jasmine arbour. And though his eyes were still confused by the lantern light he knew her again in the dusk.
As they passed she said under her breath: "That was ill-bred. I am disappointed."
He wheeled in his tracks; she turned to confront him for an instant.
"I'm just a plain beast," he said. "You won't forgive me of course."
"You had no right to say what you did. You said 'Calypso'--and I ought not to have heard you.... But I did.... Tell me; if I am too generous to suspect you of intentional impertinence, you are now too chastened to suspect that I came back to give you this chance. That is quite true, isn't it?"
"Of course. You are generous and--it's simply fine of you to overlook it."
"I don't know whether I intend to overlook it; I was surprised and disappointed; but I did desire to give you another chance. And I was so afraid you'd be rude enough to take it that--I spoke first. That was logical. Oh, I know what I'm doing--and it's particularly common of me--being who I am--"
She paused, meeting his gaze deliberately.
"You don't know who I am. Do you?"
"No," he said. "I don't deserve to. But I'll be miserable until I do."
After a moment: "And you are not going to ask me--because, once, I said that it was nice of you not to?"
The hint of mockery in her voice edged his lips with a smile, but he shook his head. "No, I won't ask you that," he said. "I've been beastly