Роберт Чамберс - A Young Man in a Hurry

Her blue eyes swept all in rapid review—the guns leaning against the tree; the bunch of dead bluebill ducks hanging beyond; the improvised table and bench outside; the enormous mottled rattlesnake skin tacked lengthways on a live–oak.

"Are there many of those about?" she inquired.

"Very few"—he waited to control the voice which did not sound much like his own—"very few rattlers yet. They come out later."

"That's amiable of them," she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

There was a pause.

"I hope you are well," he ventured.

"Perfectly—and thank you. I hope you are well, Jack."

"Thank you, Kathleen."

She picked up a chip of rose–colored cedar and sniffed it daintily.

"Like a lead–pencil, isn't it? Put that big log on the fire. The odor of burning cedar must be delicious."

He lifted the great log and laid it across the coals.

"Suppose we lunch?" she proposed, looking straight at the simmering coffee–pot.

"Would you really care to?" Then he raised his voice: "Tiger! Tiger! Where the dickens are you?" But Tiger, half a mile away, squatted sulkily on the lagoon's edge, fishing, and muttering to himself that there were too many white people in the forest for him.

"He won't come," said Haltren. "You know the Seminoles hate the whites, and consider themselves still unconquered. There is scarcely an instance on record of a Seminole attaching himself to one of us."

"But your tame Tiger appears to follow you."

"He's an exception."

"Perhaps you are an exception, too."

He looked up with a haggard smile, then bent over the fire and poked the ashes with a pointed palmetto stem. There were half a dozen sweet–potatoes there, and a baked duck and an ash–cake.

"Goodness!" she said; "if you knew how hungry I am you wouldn't be so deliberate. Where are the cups and spoons? Which is Tiger's? Well, you may use his."

The log table was set and the duck ready before Haltren could hunt up the jug of mineral water which Tiger had buried somewhere to keep cool.

When he came back with it from the shore he found her sitting at table with an exaggerated air of patience.

They both laughed a little; he took his seat opposite; she poured the coffee, and he dismembered the duck.

"You ought to be ashamed of that duck," she said. "The law is on now."

"I know it," he replied, "but necessity knows no law. I'm up here looking for wild orange stock, and I live on what I can get. Even the sacred, unbranded razor–back is fish for our net—with a fair chance of a shooting–scrape between us and a prowling cracker. If you will stay to dinner you may have roast wild boar."

"That alone is almost worth staying for, isn't it?" she asked, innocently.

There was a trifle more color in his sunburned face.

She ate very little, though protesting that her hunger shamed her; she sipped her coffee, blue eyes sometimes fixed on the tall palms and oaks overhead, sometimes on him.

"What was that great, winged shadow that passed across the table?" she exclaimed.

"A vulture; they are never far away."

"Ugh!" she shuddered; "always waiting for something to die! How can a man live here, knowing that?"

"I don't propose to die out–doors," said Haltren, laughing.

Again the huge shadow swept between them; she shrank back with a little gesture of repugnance. Perhaps she was thinking of her nearness to death in the inlet.

"Are there alligators here, too?" she asked.

"Yes; they run away from you."

"And moccasin snakes?"

"Some. They don't trouble a man who keeps his eyes open."

"A nice country you live in!" she said, disdainfully.

"It is one kind of country. There is good shooting."

"Anything else?"

"Sunshine all the year round. I have a house covered with scented things and buried in orange–trees. It is very beautiful. A little lonely at times—one can't have Fifth Avenue and pick one's own grape–fruit from the veranda, too."

A silence fell between them; through the late afternoon stillness they heard the splash! splash! of leaping mullet in the lagoon. Suddenly a crimson–throated humming–bird whirred past, hung vibrating before a flowering creeper, then darted away.

"Spring is drifting northward," he said. "To–morrow will be Easter Day—Pasque Florida."

She rose, saying, carelessly, "I was not thinking of to–morrow; I was thinking of to–day," and, walking across the cleared circle, she picked up her paddle. He followed her, and she looked around gayly, swinging the paddle to her shoulder.

"You said you were thinking of to–day," he stammered. "It—it is our anniversary."

She raised her eyebrows. "I am astonished that you remembered…. I think that I ought to go. The Dione will be in before long—"

"We can hear her whistle when she steams in," he said.

"Are you actually inviting me to stay?" she laughed, seating herself on the soap–box once more.

They became very grave as he sat down on the ground at her feet, and, a silence threatening, she hastily filled it with a description of the yacht and Major Brent's guests. He listened, watching her intently. And after a while, having no more to say, she pretended to hear sounds resembling a distant yacht's whistle.

"It's the red–winged blackbirds in the reeds," he said. "Now will you let me say something—about the past?"

"It has buried itself," she said, under her breath.

"To–morrow is Easter," he went on, slowly. "Can there be no resurrection for dead days as there is for Easter flowers? Winter is over; Pasque Florida will dawn on a world of blossoms. May I speak, Kathleen?"

"It is I who should speak," she said. "I meant to. It is this: forgive me for all. I am sorry."

"I have nothing to forgive," he said. "I was a—a failure. I—I do not understand women."

"Nor I men. They are not what I understand. I don't mean the mob I've been bred to dance with—I understand them. But a real man—" she laughed, drearily—"I expected a god for a husband."

"I am sorry," he said; "I am horribly sorry. I have learned many things in four years. Kathleen, I—I don't know what to do."

"There is nothing to do, is there?"

"Your freedom—"

"I am free."

"I am afraid you will need more freedom than you have, some day."

She looked him full in the eyes. "Do you desire it?"

A faint sound fell upon the stillness of the forest; they listened; it came again from the distant sea.

"I think it is the yacht," she said.

They rose together; he took her paddle, and they walked down the jungle path to the landing. Her canoe and his spare boat lay there, floating close together.

"It will be an hour before a boat from the yacht reaches the wrecked launch," he said. "Will you wait in my boat?"

She bent her head and laid her hand in his, stepping lightly into the bow.

"Cast off and row me a little way," she said, leaning back in the stern. "Isn't this lagoon wonderful? See the color in water and sky. How green the forest is!—green as a young woodland in April. And the reeds are green and gold, and the west is all gold. Look at that great white bird—with wings like an angel's! What is that heavenly odor from the forest? Oh," she sighed, elbows on knees, "this is too delicious to be real!"

A moment later she began, irrelevantly: "Ethics! Ethics! who can teach them? One must know, and heed no teaching. All preconceived ideas may be wrong; I am quite sure I was wrong—sometimes."

And again irrelevantly, "I was horribly intolerant once."

"Once you asked me a question," he said. "We separated because I refused to answer you."

She closed her eyes and the color flooded her face.

"I shall never ask it again," she said.

But he went on: "I refused to reply. I was an ass; I had theories, too. They're gone, quite gone. I will answer you now, if you wish."