The Tidal Wave and Other Stories Part 21

The words amazed her. With a great start of bewilderment she lifted her head and looked at him. He put his hands upon her shoulders. She thought she saw a smile hovering about his lips, but it was of a species she had never seen there before.

"Because," he explained gently, "I knew."

She stared at him in wonder, scarcely breathing, the tears all gone from her eyes.

"You--knew!" she said slowly, at last.

"Yes, I knew," he said. He looked deep into her eyes for seconds, and then she felt him drawing her irresistibly to him. She yielded herself as driftwood yields to a racing flood, no longer caring for the interpretation of the riddle, scarcely remembering its existence; heard him laugh above her head--a brief, exultant laugh--as he clasped her.

And then came his lips upon her own....

"You see, dear," he said later, a quiver that was not all laughter in his voice, "it is not so remarkably wonderful, after all, that I should know all about it, when you come to consider that I was there--there with you in the magic circle all the time."

"You were there!" she echoed, turning in his arms. "But how was it I never knew? Why did I not see you?"

"Faith, sweetheart, I think you did!" said Sir Roland. Then, at her quick cry of amazed understanding: "I wanted to teach you a lesson, but, sure, I'm thinking it's myself that learned one, after all." And, as she clung to him, still hardly believing: "We have found our paradise together, my Lady Una," he whispered softly. "And, love, there is no way back."

THE LOOKER-ON

I

"Oh, I'm going to be Lady Jane Grey," said Charlie Cleveland, balancing himself on the deck-rail in front of his friends, Mrs. Langdale and Mollie Erle, with considerable agility. "And, Mollie, I say, will you lend me a black silk skirt? I saw you were wearing one last night."

He spoke with complete seriousness. It was this boy's way to infuse into all his actions an enthusiasm that deprived the most trifling of the commonplace element. He was the gayest pa.s.senger on board--the very life of the boat. Yet he had few accomplishments to recommend him, his abundant spirits alone attaining for him the popularity he everywhere enjoyed.

Molly Erle, who with Mrs. Langdale was returning home after spending the winter with some friends at Calcutta, regarded him with a toleration not wholly devoid of contempt. He apparently deemed it necessary to pay her a good deal of attention, and Molly was strongly determined to keep him at a distance--a matter, by the way, that had its difficulties in face of young Cleveland's romping lack of ceremony.

"Yes, you may have the skirt," she said with a generosity not wholly spontaneous, as he waited expectantly for a reply to his request.

"Ah, good!" he said effusively. "That is a great weight off my mind. And may I have Number Ten on your programme?"

"Are you going to dance?" asked Mrs. Langdale, with a half-suppressed laugh.

He turned upon her, grinning openly.

"No. Fisher says I mustn't. I'm going to sit out, dear Mrs. Langdale--a modest wall-flower for once. I hope you will all be very kind to me.

Have you made a note of Number Ten, Molly--I mean, Miss Erle? No? But you will, though. Ah! Thanks, awfully! Here comes Fisher! I wish you would persuade him to do Guildford Dudley. I can't."

He bounced off the rail and departed, laughing.

Molly looked after him with slight disapprobation on her pretty face. He was such a thoroughly nice boy. She wished with almost unreasonable intensity that he possessed more of that sterling quality, solidity, for which his travelling companion, Fisher, was chiefly noteworthy.

Captain Fisher approached them with a casual air as if he had drifted their way by accident. He was one of those oppressively quiet men who possess the unhappy knack of appearing wholly out of touch with all social surroundings. There was a reticence about him which almost all took for surliness, but which was in reality merely a somewhat unattractive mixture of awkwardness and laziness.

He was in the Royal Engineers, and believed to be a very clever man in his profession. But there was never anything in the least bright or original in his conversation. Yet, for some vague reason, Molly credited him with the ability to do great deeds, and was particularly gracious to him.

Mrs. Langdale, who was lively herself, infinitely preferred Charlie Cleveland's boisterous company, and on the present occasion she rose to follow him with great prompt.i.tude.

"I must find out how he has managed the rest of his costume," she said to Molly. "It is sure to be strikingly original--like himself."

The contempt deepened a little on Molly's face, contempt and regret--an odd mixture.

"He is very funny, no doubt," she said; "but I think one gets a little tired of his perpetual gaiety. I don't think we should find him so delightful if a storm came on. I haven't much faith in those people who can never take anything really seriously. I believe he would die laughing."

"All the better," declared Mrs. Langdale, who loved Charlie's impetuous ways with maternal tolerance. "It is always better to laugh than cry, my dear; though it isn't always easier by any means."

She departed with the words, laughing a little to herself at Molly's critical mood; and Captain Fisher went and sat stolidly down beside Molly, who turned to him with an instant smile of welcome. She was the only lady on board who was never bored by this man's quiet society. She liked him thoroughly, finding the contrast between him and his volatile friend a great relief.

Fisher never talked frivolities; indeed, he seldom talked at all. Yet to Molly the hour he spent beside her on that sunny day in the Mediterranean pa.s.sed as pleasantly and easily as she could have desired.

Captain Fisher might seem heavy to others, but never to her--a fact of which secretly she was rather proud.

II

"Come up on deck!" whispered Charlie in an eager undertone. "There's no one there, and the night is divine."

Molly Erie looked at the strange figure in fancy-dress beside her and laughed aloud. She had not allowed Charlie a _tete-a-tete_ for many days, but she felt that he could scarcely attempt to be sentimental in that costume.

She went with him, therefore, thinking what a pretty girl he would have made.

Charlie led her to the deck-rail. His ridiculous figure was less obtrusively absurd in the dim light. His laughing voice, lowered half-confidently, half-reverently, sounded less inconsequent than was its wont.

Suddenly he turned to her and spoke with wholly unexpected vehemence.

"I can't keep it in," he said. "You've got to know it. Molly, I love you most awfully. You do know it, I believe, without being told. Why do you always run away and hide when I try to speak?"

He spoke quickly, jerkily. She glanced at him with a nervous movement as she drew back. He was not laughing for once, yet she fancied there was the shadow of a smile quivering about his face. Possibly it was an illusion. The dim light made everything indefinite. But the suspicion roused in her in full strength her prejudice against him. She drew back deliberately, and her anger grew from scorn to cruelty during the moments that intervened between his question and her answer.

"You have chosen a very appropriate occasion," she remarked icily at length. "Do you imagine yourself irresistible when playing the fool, I wonder?"

He faced round on her.

"I have taken the only opportunity I could get," he said. "I am a slave of circ.u.mstance. If I had come to you in rational costume you would not have consented to sit out with me."

There was a ring of laughter in his explanation. He did not take her anger seriously, then. Molly quivered with indignation. She would speedily show him his mistake.

"You think, then," she said, "that this buffoonery is too amusing to be foregone? I am afraid I do not agree with you."

She paused. Charlie had given a great start of surprise. She could see the astonishment on his boyish face under the white mantilla he wore.

"Oh, look here!" he exclaimed impetuously. "You have got the wrong side of everything. It isn't buffoonery. I don't play with sacred things.