2
"I called at your place," Mr. Carmyle was saying, "and the hall porter
told me that you were here, so I ventured to follow you. I hope you do
not mind? May I smoke?"
He lit a cigarette with something of an air. His fingers trembled as he
raised the match, but he flattered himself that there was nothing else
in his demeanour to indicate that he was violently excited. Bruce
Carmyle's ideal was the strong man who can rise superior to his
emotions. He was alive to the fact that this was an embarrassing moment,
but he was determined not to show that he appreciated it. He cast a
sideways glance at Sally, and thought that never, not even in the garden
at Monk's Crofton on a certain momentous occasion, had he seen her
looking prettier. Her face was flushed and her eyes aflame. The stout
wraith of Uncle Donald, which had accompanied Mr. Carmyle on this
expedition of his, faded into nothingness as he gazed.
There was a pause. Mr. Carmyle, having lighted his cigarette, puffed
vigorously.
"When did you land?" asked Sally, feeling the need of saying something.
Her mind was confused. She could not have said whether she was glad or
sorry that he was there. Glad, she thought, on the whole. There was
something in his dark, cool, stiff English aspect that gave her a
curious feeling of relief. He was so unlike Mr. Cracknell and the man
from up-state and so calmly remote from the feverish atmosphere in
which she lived her nights that it was restful to look at him.
"I landed to-night," said Bruce Carmyle, turning and faced her squarely.
"To-night!"
"We docked at ten."
He turned away again. He had made his effect, and was content to leave
her to think it over.
Sally was silent. The significance of his words had not escaped her.
She realized that his presence there was a challenge which she must
answer. And yet it hardly stirred her. She had been fighting so long,
and she felt utterly inert. She was like a swimmer who can battle no
longer and prepares to yield to the numbness of exhaustion. The heat of
the room pressed down on her like a smothering blanket. Her tired nerves
cried out under the blare of music and the clatter of voices.
"Shall we dance this?" he asked.
The orchestra had started to play again, a sensuous, creamy melody which
was making the most of its brief reign as Broadway's leading song-hit,
overfamiliar to her from a hundred repetitions.
"If you like."
Efficiency was Bruce Carmyle's gospel. He was one of these men who do
not attempt anything which they cannot accomplish to perfection.
Dancing, he had decided early in his life, was a part of a gentleman's
education, and he had seen to it that he was educated thoroughly. Sally,
who, as they swept out on to the floor, had braced herself automatically
for a repetition of the usual bumping struggle which dancing at the
Flower Garden had come to mean for her, found herself in the arms of a
masterful expert, a man who danced better than she did, and suddenly
there came to her a feeling that was almost gratitude, a miraculous
slackening of her taut nerves, a delicious peace. Soothed and
contented, she yielded herself with eyes half closed to the rhythm of
the melody, finding it now robbed in some mysterious manner of all its
stale cheapness, and in that moment her-whole attitude towards Bruce
Carmyle underwent a complete change.
She had never troubled to examine with any minuteness her feelings
towards him: but one thing she had known clearly since their first
meeting--that he was physically distasteful to her. For all his good
looks, and in his rather sinister way he was a handsome man, she had
shrunk from him. Now, spirited away by the magic of the dance, that
repugnance had left her. It was as if some barrier had been broken down
between them.
"Sally!"
She felt his arm tighten about her, the muscles quivering. She caught
sight of his face. His dark eyes suddenly blazed into hers and she
stumbled with an odd feeling of helplessness; realizing with a shock
that brought her with a jerk out of the half-dream into which she had
been lulled that this dance had not postponed the moment of decision, as
she had looked to it to do. In a hot whisper, the words swept away on
the flood of the music which had suddenly become raucous and blaring
once more, he was repeating what he had said under the trees at Monk's
Crofton on that far-off morning in the English springtime. Dizzily she
knew that she was resenting the unfairness of the attack at such a
moment, but her mind seemed numbed.
The music stopped abruptly. Insistent clapping started it again, but
Sally moved away to her table, and he followed her like a shadow.
Neither spoke. Bruce Carmyle had said his say, and Sally was sitting
staring before her, trying to think. She was tired, tired. Her eyes were
burning. She tried to force herself to face the situation squarely. Was
it worth struggling? Was anything in the world worth a struggle? She
only knew that she was tired, desperately tired, tired to the very
depths of her soul.
The music stopped. There was more clapping, but this time the orchestra
did not respond. Gradually the floor emptied. The shuffling of feet
ceased. The Flower Garden was as quiet as it was ever able to be. Even
the voices of the babblers seemed strangely hushed. Sally closed her
eyes, and as she did so from somewhere up near the roof there came the
song of a bird.
Isadore Abrahams was a man of his word. He advertised a Flower Garden,
and he had tried to give the public something as closely resembling a
flower-garden as it was possible for an overcrowded, overheated,
overnoisy Broadway dancing-resort to achieve. Paper roses festooned the
walls; genuine tulips bloomed in tubs by every pillar; and from the roof
hung cages with birds in them. One of these, stirred by the sudden
cessation of the tumult below, had began to sing.
Sally had often pitied these birds, and more than once had pleaded in
vain with Abrahams for a remission of their sentence, but somehow at
this moment it did not occur to her that this one was merely praying in
its own language, as she often had prayed in her thoughts, to be taken
out of this place. To her, sitting there wrestling with Fate, the song
seemed cheerful. It soothed her. It healed her to listen to it. And
suddenly before her eyes there rose a vision of Monk's Crofton, cool,
green, and peaceful under the mild English sun, luring her as an oasis
seen in the distance lures the desert traveller ...
She became aware that the master of Monk's Crofton had placed his hand
on hers and was holding it in a tightening grip. She looked down and
gave a little shiver. She had always disliked Bruce Carmyle's hands.
They were strong and bony and black hair grew on the back of them. One
of the earliest feelings regarding him had been that she would hate to
have those hands touching her. But she did not move. Again that vision
of the old garden had flickered across her mind... a haven where she
could rest...
He was leaning towards her, whispering in her ear. The room was hotter
than it had ever been, noisier than it had ever been, fuller than it had
ever been. The bird on the roof was singing again and now she understood
what it said. "Take me out of this!" Did anything matter except that?
What did it matter how one was taken, or where, or by whom, so that one
was taken.
Monk's Crofton was looking cool and green and peaceful...
"Very well," said Sally.
