Роберт Чамберс: A Young Man in a Hurry

She bent her crimsoned face; the silence of evening fell over the arbor.

"I don't know why I came," she said—"whether with a vague idea of giving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warn you that your soliloquies were audible to me—whether to tempt you to speak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousand shop–girls you have observed after the shops close—"

"Don't," he said, hoarsely. "I'm miserable enough."

"I don't wish you to feel miserable," she said. "I have a very exalted idea of you. I—I understand artists."

"They're fools," he said. "Say anything you like before I go. I had—hoped for—perhaps for your friendship. But a woman can't respect a fool."

He rose in his humiliation.

"I can ask no privileges," he said, "but I must say one thing before I go. You have a book there which bears the signature of an artist named Marlitt. I am very anxious for his address; I think I have important news for him—good news. That is why I ask it."

The girl looked at him quietly.

"What news have you for him?"

"I suppose you have a right to ask," he said, "or you would not ask. I do not know Marlitt. I liked his work. Mr. Calvert suggested that Marlitt should return to resume work—"

"No," said the girl, " you suggested it."

He was staggered. "Did you even hear that!" he gasped.

"You were standing by your window," she said. "Mr. Tennant, I think that was the real reason why I came to the wistaria arbor—to thank you for what you have done. You see—you see, I am Marlitt."

He sank down on the seat opposite.

"Everything has gone wrong," she said. "I came to thank you—and everything turned out so differently—and I was dreadfully rude to you—"

She covered her face with her hands.

"Then you wrote me that letter," he said, slowly. In the silence of the gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arbor with silvery radiance. He said:

"If a man had written me that letter I should have desired his friendship and offered mine."

She dropped her hands and looked at him. "Thank you for speaking to Calvert," she said, rising hastily; "I have been desperately in need of work. My pride is quite dead, you see—one or the other of us had to die."

She looked down with a gay little smile. "If it wouldn't spoil you I should tell you what I think of you. Meanwhile, as servitude becomes man, you may tie my shoe for me—Marlitt's shoe that pinched you…. Tie it tightly, so that I shall not lose it again…. Thank you."

As he rose, their eyes met once more; and the perilous sweetness in hers fascinated him.

She drew a deep, unsteady breath. "Will you take me home?" she asked.

The steady flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh–grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid–day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous red smear overhead.

Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among the reeds and inspected the landscape. Already the fish–crows and egrets were flying inland, the pelicans had left the sandbar, the eagles were gone from beach and dune. High in the thickening sky wild ducks passed over Flyover Point and dropped into the sheltered marshes among the cypress.

As Haltren stood undecided, watching the ruddy play of lightning, which came no nearer than the horizon, a squall struck the lagoon. Then, amid the immense solitude of marsh and water, a deep sound grew—the roar of the wind in the wilderness. The solemn pæon swelled and died away as thunder dies, leaving the air tremulous.

"I'd better get out of this," said Haltren to himself. He felt for the breech of his gun, unloaded both barrels, and slowly pocketed the cartridges.

Eastward, between the vast salt river and the ocean, the dunes were smoking like wind–lashed breakers; a heron, laboring heavily, flapped inland, broad pinions buffeting the gale.

"Something's due to happen," said Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator–slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip–boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge–sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft of wind–tossed wooden decoys.

There were twoscore decoys bobbing and tugging at their anchor–cords outside the point. Before he had fished up a dozen on the blade of his oar a heavier squall struck the lagoon, blowing the boat out into the river. He had managed to paddle back and had secured another brace of decoys, when a violent gale caught him broadside, almost capsizing him.

"If I don't get those decoys now I never shall!" he muttered, doggedly jabbing about with extended oar. But he never got them; for at that moment a tropical hurricane, still in its infancy, began to develop, and when, blinded with spray, he managed to jam the oars into the oar–locks, his boat was half a mile out and still driving.

For a week the wind had piled the lagoons and lakes south of the Matanzas full of water, and now the waves sprang up, bursting into menacing shapes, knocking the boat about viciously. Haltren turned his unquiet eyes towards a streak of green water ahead.

"I don't suppose this catspaw is really trying to drive me out of Coquina Inlet!" he said, peevishly; "I don't suppose I'm being blown out to sea."

It was a stormy end for a day's pleasure—yet curiously appropriate, too, for it was the fourth anniversary of his wedding–day; and the storm that followed had blown him out into the waste corners of the world.

Perhaps something of this idea came into his head; he laughed a disagreeable laugh and fell to rowing.

The red lightning still darted along the southern horizon, no nearer; the wilderness of water, of palm forests, of jungle, of dune, was bathed in a sickly light; overhead oceans of clouds tore through a sombre sky.

After a while he understood that he was making no headway; then he saw that the storm was shaping his course. He dug his oars into the thick, gray waves; the wind tore the cap from his head, caught the boat and wrestled with it.

Somehow or other he must get the boat ashore before he came abreast of the inlet; otherwise—

He turned his head and stared at the whitecaps tumbling along the deadly raceway; and he almost dropped his oars in astonishment to see a gasoline–launch battling for safety just north of the storm–swept channel. What was a launch doing in this forsaken end of the earth? And the next instant developed the answer. Out at sea, beyond the outer bar, a yacht, wallowing like a white whale, was staggering towards the open ocean.

He saw all this in a flash—saw the gray–green maelstrom between the dunes, the launch struggling across the inlet, the yacht plunging seaward. Then in the endless palm forests the roar deepened. Flash! Bang! lightning and thunder were simultaneous.

"That's better," said Haltren, hanging to his oars; "there's a fighting chance now."

The rain came, beating the waves down, seemingly, for a moment, beating out the wind itself. In the partial silence the sharp explosions of the gasoline–engine echoed like volleys of pistol–shots; and Haltren half rose in his pitching boat, and shouted: "Launch ahoy! Run under the lee shore. There's a hurricane coming! You haven't a second to lose!"

He heard somebody aboard the launch say, distinctly, "There's a Florida cracker alongside who says a hurricane is about due." The shrill roar of the rain drowned the voice. Haltren bent to his oars again. Then a young man in dripping white flannels looked out of the wheel–house and hailed him. "We've grounded on the meadows twice. If you know the channel you'd better come aboard and take the wheel."