Dead Birds (Saturday Evening Post serial)/Part 1

by Henry C. Rowland

[ PART 1 ]

 

WHEN the valet had unpacked him and gone out, Marsh McQuentin looked round him, languidly at first, then with growing interest and appreciation. He perceived that his accommodations were the very last word in what might be described as comfort or luxury, depending on what a person requires or enjoys, and that their elegance was as unobtrusive as Nature or the perfection of an art. The bedroom, moderately spacious, had, despite its immaculate perfection, no impalpable cover glass with its warning, Do not touch. It was courteously and informally inviting, a sort of thoroughbred bedroom that, like anything of that class, could stand a bit of rumpling

“Don't Struggle,” Said a Limpid Voice. “Let Yourself Go. I've Got You”

 

All quite perfect, Marsh thought, and the more to be appreciated because his host, Sherrill Dodge, and Cicely had been their own home decorators. One would expect it of Dodge, but scarcely of Cicely, who impressed one as more of a modern than as a connoisseur of periods and objects of art. She might know how to furnish bedrooms though.

The truth was, Marsh reflected, that both father and daughter inherited from several generations of rich and cultured ancestors the faculties required to furnish and decorate a big house faultlessly. They did not have to learn it by degrees as some people do.

Take his bathroom, for instance. No suggestion of antiseptic surgery, but relieved and gayed up by a pretty fresco outlining, bath mats that were not bathmatty, face-cloths embroidered in delicate colors, and towels that did not look as if a nurse had just taken them out of the steam sterilizer. There was a framed etching after Alma-Tadema, pretty girls before, during and after their dip, and a small marine of the Gulf Stream.

Well, no doubt there were a good many people who could do the same if they had the money. There were lots of people of taste and knowledge, and even more rich ones. The science and art of living, of how to be rich and elegant, had in the case of the Dodge family been mastered a great many years age, when such a course did not present so many complications, The bewilderments of modern conditions that assail the newly rich had presented themselves to this household as no perplexing problems because superimposed on a basis of savoir-faire, like trigonometry to the student whose knowledge of arithmetic and geometry is sound; merely an advanced course in domestic economy.

Hot and dusty from a stifling morning in town, followed by the train journey, Marsh took a shower and dressed for golf. Cicely had said something about playing that afternoon. Other guests were due to arrive in the course of the day, Marsh understood; but not until late, probably; and Mrs. Williams, the other Dodge daughter, would be there to receive them. Like Marsh, they had been invited for a week. Just who they were he had not yet learned. He had met Mrs. Williams the winter before at Dodge's city house on upper Fifth Avenue. She was young and pretty, a war widow; and, with her little boy, was now spending the summer at her father's summer home.

As Marsh went out and along the wide corridor to go down, a cheery voice hailed him from a room that looked on the Sound. “That you, Marsh? Come in.”

Sherrill Dodge was sitting by the open window smoking a cigar. He was a youngish-looking man, of medium height, lean, trim of build and with fine clear skin and eyes that bespoke athletic exercise and temperate living. The right sort of American who gets the most out of life, where today so many merely spend the most for what seems to be the least return.

“Come here to the window and take a look at your hand-and-brain child,” Dodge said. “Isn't she a picture?”

Marsh looked out across a splendid sweep of lawn that sloped flawlessly to the rim of rock along the shore, over the sparkling stretch of water to where a big three-masted auxiliary yacht lay in docile fashion at her moorings. This was the Trilby, designed by Marsh to the order of Sherrill Dodge and built under Marsh's close supervision. As an achievement, this last creation pleased him vastly more than the series of cup winners that during the past few years had brought him into prominence, placed him high in his profession. A trial run to Bermuda and back in May, when on the return voyage a hard southeast gale was purposely encountered, had enabled the Trilby to show her splendid qualities. Her designer was entitled to look upon his work and find it good. “Gaze and admire,” Dodge said. “That's getting to be my favorite passive sport.”

“A vicious habit in yachting,” Marsh said. “Lots of owners do that when they oust to be on the high seas. Sit in a rocker on the yacht-club porch and wait for some gal to come along and say, 'There's a beaut, I'll tell the seasick world. Wonder who owns her?'” Dodge laughed.

“When they ought really to shout, 'Wonder who designed her,' eh what? Well, I'll bet you fall for it yourself.”

“Not very often. I'd rather see 'em sail. Just the other day I called down Commodore Kane for that very thing. Told him if I'd known I was designing him a lightship I could have saved him some money on his boat. What a perfect lawn you've got. Like an English one. Starlings and everything.”

“English colonial,” Dodge amended. “Bermuda turf. And I could do without the starlings. Like many old-country importations, it doesn't take much encouragement to make them undesirable aliens.”

Marsh, despite his disclaimer, was staring at the yacht.

“I'm not sure yet but what an old-fashioned clipper bow mightn't have dignified her.”

“No, her face fits her perfectly. So does her name, I think, though some of my friends are knocking it.”

Cicely came in and having greeted her guest continued the discussion. She was the sort of girl who suggests a Valkyrie in certain moods and a hamadryad in others.

“Never mind, daddy dear. At least you didn't name her as some people do. Nowadays if a man intends to run a floating bar he names his boat Sobriety, or if a solid loaf is what he wants, Industry. Wild parties usually take place aboard a yacht named Virtue, or something of the sort. It doesn't seem quite fair to the ones that worked so hard to make her that thing of beauty that should be a joy forever, not only the designer but the ship joiners and ironworkers and calkers and riggers and sailmakers.”

“I'm glad you get that, Cicely,” Marsh said. “It's the composite soul of a boat that makes her valiant. Kipling was right.”

Luncheon was announced They went down, only the three at table, a trinity, as Cicely observed.

“The lull before the storm, Marsh. A whole corvet to arrive about six, but we'll be back by then. I'm afraid it will hardly be a rest cure for a poor tired toiler. But then, there's no such thing.”

The fuller sense of this was borne in on Marsh when some hours later he went down to meet his fellow guests, of whom there were six. These, in order of a precedence to puzzle their hostess, comprised the Right Reverend John Starr, bishop emeritus; a Senator Aussy and his wife; a young French diplomat attached to the embassy, Captain Peuplier; and a Major Smith-Curran, visiting the United States with his daughter Iona.

The immediate family of Sherrill Dodge was composed of his two daughters—Mrs. Williams, the elder; Cicely, who administered the household for her father; and a son, Barclay, now serving as an undersecretary to the American Embassy in London.

Although this was the first occasion on which his entertainment at the Dodge home had been of an intimate sort, entirely free of any professional relationship, Marsh had become very well acquainted with the daughters of the house. For the past two years he had met them frequently in yachting channels, at Newport and Bar Harbor and the Florida beaches. Cicely had attracted him more in a generic than personal way, as the type of young woman which taken full and by he most admired. Her thoroughbred qualities walked hand in hand with clean-cut physical attractions, and she possessed a sort of distinguished common sense and level-headedness rather rare in this hectic epoch, something of the feudal chatelaine of a noble estate such as one pictures administering the high justice, the middle and the low in her domestic personnel, scrutinizing corners that might be dusty, with a bunch of keys at her girdle.

This picture did not interfere with a certain amount of gayety on Cicely's part, and some of the mannerisms of the younger set of present-day America. Her speech, for instance, was not invariably classic. Like her father, she had on Marsh's arrival appeared to find a change in their friendly relations that warranted the intimacy of a family friend, where hitherto they had been semiprofessional.

“Let's drop the miss and mister,” she said, “and get on a Marsh and Cicely basis.”

It was from this moment that Marsh began to view her at closer focus, as if when cruising down the coast he had, on nearing his prospective port, laid aside the small-scale for the large-scale harbor chart.

Passing to the bishop, this distinguished churchman and Sherrill Dodge had been roommates through college and close friends in their subsequent careers, if indeed the mere administration of the Dodge estate, with certain public services of a detached inconspicuous sort, can be considered a career. Bishop Starr, on inheriting a considerable fortune, had retired from active ecclesiastical work for that of mission organization. A strong advocate of a celibate clergy, he had never married. In person he was a portly, handsome, jovial man, constitutionally righteous, as one might say, devout without being ascetic, liberal in his attitude toward human frailties and ready to forgive anything in the individual who despite lapses still remained an adherent and supporter of the church.

The bishop in fact enjoyed rubbing elbows with sinners, was interested in prison reform, post-penitentiary salvage, spent a good deal of his time in penal institutions and was the author of an able book entitled Religion and the Public Peace. Perhaps he got a sort of vicarious satisfaction in his contacts with the criminal class, appeased that lawless factor of the cosmos that is to be found in all strong men, fought evil for the gusto of the fight.

He had a deep sense of humor and no small degree of choler on occasion. He hated a well-behaved infidel with such an animosity as he could never have visited on a transgressor of religious conviction, without much reference to what the sect might be. His principal weakness lay in his firm belief that had he not been called to holy orders he would have made a brilliant criminologist.

Senator and Mrs. Aussy impressed Marsh as being the sort of people that an author or playwright might have selected had he needed such merely as background props a proper sort of senator and his wife; rich, worthy, correct, and a bit dull; trite, a trifle pedantic, slow, safe and sure.

The young French military attaché, Captain Peuplier, was charming, well-bred, tactful, young for his thirty-five years and distinguished military record, with a sort of spontaneous gayety that shells had been powerless to shock. He was naïvely wife hunting and confessed himself handicapped through the lack of a title.

“Officier de la Légion d' Honneur, yes,” he said to Marsh with a wry smile, “and decorations enough to trim a Christmas tree. But that is no good. A woman cannot call herself after them. Marquise or comtesse or even baronne would be better.”

And so to the couple who left Marsh entirely at sea in his attempt to get an observation on their altitude—Major Smith-Curran and his daughter Iona. The girl was placed opposite him at the dinner table, next to the Frenchman, who kept her attention on his French patter except for intervals when politeness required a few words to the senator's wife, who was deaf. Marsh, next to Cicely, examined Iona with a surreptitious interest.

At first sight he had thought her one of those ugly-pretty women who repel, just as certain ill-featured ones attract. He changed this opinion when the attaché managed to make her show genuine amusement. French gentlemen, he knew, were infinitely discreet with young girls of position, but not with older ones; and besides, there was something about Iona that suggested the grown-up hotel child. Marsh could visualize her as a leggy little girl with stagy eyes and a great deal of hair, romping in the Peacock Alleys of a round-the-world belt of hotels.

Before dinner Marsh had observed her lithe shapeliness, of a sort that seems unclothed in certain postures even if wearing heavy mourning; a sort of accent that is neither grave nor acute nor even circumflex over the feminine salients. There seemed to be vibrations coming from her, though she was not a wriggler. On the contrary, her thick lusterless red hair, and eyes that were hot and dusky, like scorched saddle leather, were features in which light and motion seemed quenched. In repose, she looked still and sulky; but her smile loosed thrills in the beholder, like a crimson ray of sunlight through a gray solid rampart of nimbus.

Major Smith-Curran was baffling also to Marsh, in that he looked far less than the fifty-and-odd years that must be due Iona's father. There was a distinct family resemblance between them, however; the same straight, well-bridged nose; the same facial angle of ninety degrees; the chin on the same vertical as the plane of the forehead. The major was the distinct type of British Empire builder who sits about colonial clubs in riding breeches and pith helmet, talking about home and never going there. He looked hard as teak, ruddy as rosewood from a long combination of sun and whisky, and toughly yielding like bamboo. His eyes reminded Marsh of veined agates. A hard-boiled bird, Marsh thought.

After dinner there were bridge and dancing and the sort of general moving about that happens in a big country house of a sultry evening. Marsh, in obedience to some compelling summons that was not entirely distasteful, asked Iona to dance, and discovered immediately that he had never encountered such light-flowing synthetic rhythm before in any woman he had ever danced with. It was like being caught up in the eddy of a swirling torrent, because his movements seemed to be actually in response to hers without his being conscious of it, as a swimmer might be in a vortex.

Pausing presently, she said, “It's really too hot to dance—even the minimum physical exertion of dancing with you.”

“Your compliment,” said Marsh, “is like your dancing.”

“That remark,” she said, “is subtle too. I thought we should understand each other. I also am an artist like yourself. It seems to me that a man who has a feeling, an instinct for anything so elusive as the lines that go to make a boat swift or sluggish or stable or crank, and combines them as you do, is more than artisan or artist. He must have understanding, of boats and other feminine creatures.”

“I know more about boats,” Marsh answered.

“Well, no doubt you've had more experience of boats, and everybody admits their gender. Some drown you while others merely starve you.”

“You appear to understand boats too.”

“Yes, I've made long voyages on all sorts of vessels, some of which were yachts—other people's yachts. My father is a sailor of some experience, like all West Coast of Ireland folk. Let's walk down to the front.”

A little unwillingly, Marsh allowed himself to be drifted along by this new current. Coming presently to one of those iron spring settees so indispensable to French gardens which, despite their comfort and precedent, still look tawdry to most Americans, Iona paused.

“I think I'd like to rest.”

Marsh, Next to Cicely, Examined Iona With a Surreptitious Interest

They seated themselves on the yielding structure. Marsh felt uncomfortably that this was not quite in order, that his first evening at the house ought properly to be spent in attentions to his hostesses rather than out there in the soft dark with a woman who for some reason he felt did not properly belong there. It had struck him that the other guests were of a different sort from the Smith-Currans and seemed to move round them a little.

“Do you know Barclay Dodge very well, Mr. McQuentin?”

“Not very. I met him several times last autumn when he was over on leave, A friend of yours?”

“Father's and mine. We knew him first in Athens when he was attached to the legation there. And last summer he was quite a lot at our place on the river between Marlow and Henley.”

This immediately placed the Smith-Currans—explained their presence here, though they were not the sort of people Barclay Dodge would be apt to cultivate, Marsh thought. A big handsome youngster of twenty-five or six, who two years after graduation had shown a strong disinclination for any sort of commercial work whilst yet not content to be an idler. All his qualities, in fact, with his background of family and wealth, would seem to indicate that a diplomatic career was precisely his affair and that if he did his part he might go far. Sherrill Dodge's occupation was merely in the handling of his estate, in which he had proved himself rather more than a good steward. He had easily got his son appointed as secretary to the American Legation at Athens. Barclay had done excellently well and been assigned later to the Court of St. James.

“When did you see him last, Miss Smith-Curran?” Marsh asked.

“Just before we sailed, a fortnight ago. He spent the Henley Regatta week with us,”

Not knowing just what else to say, Marsh asked if Iona and her father had lived in Athens.

“Yes, off and on since the war. Father was retired for wounds received in Gallipoli. His left arm is ankylosed at the elbow. He has shipping interests out of Levantine ports and we made Athens our base. He's over here partly on maritime business.”

Marsh thought of the many idle ships lying in the roads below Governor's Island and reflected that Smith-Curran might have been commissioned to pick up a few bargains. Barclay, having enjoyed the hospitality of these people, would naturally feel it incumbent to some return of it by his father. He wondered a little if there could be anything between Barclay and Iona, but immediately decided that this was not likely. The Smith-Currans, he thought, were scarcely the sort of people with whom a young man who had the reputation of carrying his exclusiveness to the point of snobbery would be intimately involved.

“I suppose,” said Iona, “that you are a close friend of the family.”

“I can't claim so much as that. Mr. Dodge and I have been friendly acquaintances in yachting circles for some years and met often at the home of the New York Yacht Club in New York. Then I've seen a good deal of Miss Dodge at Newport and Bar Harbor and last winter in Florida. But this is the first time I've been invited to visit in a purely social capacity.”

“Really? Well, that's worth a lot, I should say. Except for crossing the continent some years ago, this is our first visit to America. I knew it was rich and magnificent, of course, but I'd scarcely expected to find such finished people.”

“But you knew Barclay.”

“You can't judge by Europeanized Americans. I thought he might be an exception.”

“Curious,” said Marsh, “that you Europeans can't seem to get it out of your heads that we're still raw products over here. Some of us are, of course, but there is a rapidly increasing number who are not.”

“So I'm beginning to learn.” She turned and looked at him as if to make this statement personal. Almost as if to say, “You're a finished product yourself.”

Marsh discovered all at once that without the searching lights this girl beside him was an unquestioned beauty. She would be that even in bright light, he thought, if only she would make some effort to control the discontent of her expressions. The salients were all there—big comprehending eyes, straight, well-shaped nose and a mouth that, if a little wide because of rather flat cheeks, was far more alluring than the tucked-in mouth of complacency. He wondered if at some time she had not been a professional dancer or actress or both. Unless a girl of such lithe grace and magnetism had been born rich she would be almost certain to capitalize such physical gifts.

“Have you ever been in the Far East?” he asked. “Singapore, Shanghai and Yokohama?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You spoke of having been a good deal at sea.”

She gave a short laugh.

“I'm always more or less at sea; one of the world's restless. As a matter of fact, I was born at sea.” She rose. “We'd better go back. You ought to be dancing with Miss Dodge instead of talking to a probationer like me. I think that of all the people looked at askance by the family, the foreign friends of the son and heir are that.”

They started to walk up the path.

“Who's looking at you askance?”

“The whole crowd. I can feel them saying, 'Who and what are these people Barclay has foisted on to us?'”

“That's no way to view it,” Marsh said. “The Dodges are not provincial. If I were you I'd take it for granted that people who had been kind to their son and entertained him must be welcome here. It is not as if Barclay were a callow cub to fall for anybody. As you say, he knows the ropes.”

“Oh, yes,” she said indifferently. “I'm oversensitive. I feel too much. And I get out of humor with my father because, like most Irishmen, he's apt to take too much for granted.”

This at least, Marsh decided, was not true. Major Smith-Curran had impressed him as anything but the impulsive type—a perfectly cold-blooded, calculating individual who neither missed tricks nor tried to haul therm in prematurely.

But as they strolled back Marsh felt uncomfortably as if their brief talk had founded some sort of sympathy between this girl and himself. He had got the fascination of her and he found himself desiring to dance with her again, to yield to that restless eddying stream that might easily develop the torrential rush of a mill race.

Afterward he danced with Cicely. It was sultry and he perspired uncomfortably, not being of the slow-pulsed, cool-surfaced cabaret type of man.

Like most nervous high-strung organizations, even mental effort was apt to moisten him, though of lean frame, and he had still that sort of debutant desire to shine on this coming-out party of his, for such it practically amounted to.

He went to his room that night flushed with success. Nearly everyone had said something particularly pleasant about his achievement. They were to spend the following day on a sail down the Sound if the breeze was furnished, and this prospect was exhilarating. All men show to best advantage in the demonstration of their work, and Marsh knew that his was good.

It puzzled him therefore as he lay on his perfect bed to find, somewhere in the depths of that mattress, the single pea that had disturbed the comfort of the real princess in the fairy tale. Was it Cicely's look as he had come from the shore with Iona Smith-Curran? Was it the elusive sense of sympathy with which Iona had infused him, or was it her dancing—the burnt-umber eyes looking into his, the rhythm of movement and the impalpable contact of her lissom body?

Marsh could not have told. He was conscious of an absolutely unwarranted gust of irritation with Barclay Dodge. Why did a fellow want to forgather with folk like these, uncertain aliens, accept their hospitality, then put his family into the position of being either ungracious or else sponsoring them? Barclay's letter must have been pretty warm to get them invited,

Iona had been right, Marsh reflected, in describing herself a restless drifter. But the deuce of it was that she made him restless too. For Iona seemed to walk into the privacy of his mind without knocking. Marsh did not want to think about her, but of Cicely, who was now beginning to reveal herself at closer range. He did not want Iona crowding in to spoil the intimate portrait of Cicely. All that day he had seemed to be moving so strongly and pleasantly in the direction of perfectly symmetrical success, and here at the end of it a siren called distractingly.

Instead of dropping peacefully to sleep, as he had hoped, Marsh began the fatal maneuver of turning from one side to the other. Insomnia had bothered him for some weeks past, and instead of combating it, he had got up when sleepless, lighted a cigarette and gone to his drafting table. To add now to his unrest, his heart began to act improperly, with a sensation of having bubbles in it. This unpleasant disorder had started with his insomnia; but an expert diagnostician had pronounced it to be merely functional, of nicotinic origin, perhaps, and the lack of systematic exercise—a nervous heart that was perfectly sound organically. Less coffee and tobacco, with deep breathing and golf, would correct it, he said.

Still, it was decidedly unpleasant; and after a few minutes of cardiac ragtime Marsh got up and stepped to his open window. He felt oppressed, physically and mentally, the latter worse because there seemed no reason for it. It struck him that his life was virtuously ill ordered for a strong man, monastic without any rhythm or background of régime. He had been sleeping badly and having his meals haphazard, rather like a family Airedale that any member of the household feeds anything at any hour when happening to think about it. A piece of steak one day at two o'clock and some cakes and candy the next at teatime.

Now if he were married—— Marsh thought of Cicely. He could now afford to marry, even Cicely. Besides, the Dodge children had inherited richly from their mother, though Marsh had heard somewhere that their fortunes were tied up in a fashion by which their father was life trustee. But Dodge had shown himself rather more than friendly, a sort of patron-benefactor-sponsor. The invitation to be his guest of a week put Marsh on the list of eligibles, now that the professional service had been completed and all business accounts settled.

Without conceit, Marsh could not help but feel that Cicely was rather more than interested in him; also that she entirely approved his work, which actually combined science, art and craft. As was to be expected, there was quite a throng of candidates for the office of Cicely's husband; but Marsh had not heard of any that was nominated. For him to marry her would be to put a layer of gold leaf on the dome of his Hall of Fame. Better than that, it would put an end to these nervous, sleepless nights and the heart palpitations of a chlorotic schoolgirl.

It was a thrilling and ambitious thought, and might have kept him pleasant company until he fell asleep had not Iona slipped in just just then—figuratively, that is to say. She managed to fog the film. Marsh wondered what it was about this young woman that was able to dim a far prettier and more charming personality. Iona was actually more of a sporting than vampish type, athletic in the way that a woman aborigine might be, her grace and strength of the wild rather than cultivated. Marsh could not have imagined himself wanting to marry her, and yet she turned the fine edge, whetted bright and shining at thought of being married to Cicely.

II

“THERE'S this fascination about the sea,” said Mr. Dodge to a group of his guests on the quarter-deck of the Trilby, foaming up the Sound close-hauled in a smoky sou'wester: “You can't improve it—civilize it, so to speak. Nobody can blaze a trail across it.”

“Quite true, Sherrill,” the bishop agreed. “There's not much terra incognita left But the sea is always the same paradox of a changeless, hourly changing expanse. You might be sailing the track of Eric the Red, or Columbus, but there's nothing to indicate it.”

“No, you don't find any monoliths inscribed with runes, or pottery. No bleaching skulls nor cairns nor crosses. Once out of sight of land, with no sail or steamer smoke, everything looks the same as it always has—the same conditions to be confronted. You can cut down virgin forest, but you can only cut through virgin waves; and ten minutes later there's no evidence of violation. So that as a field for adventure, so far as combating elemental forces is concerned, it's as fresh as in the days of Atlantis.”

The bishop nodded.

“'They that go down to the sea in ships.'”

“But I say, what's the use of such an awful lot of something that's got nothing else to it?” said Major Smith-Curran. “Once off soundings, you might be on the prime meridian or the hundred and eightieth for all the difference there is. It's as jolly well standardized as your United States.”

“Well, there's something in that,” Dodge admitted. “What I'm trying to get at is that for adventure, in the sense of combating it, the sea offers the only field that's always fresh. I suppose, though, for your real romance you have to look around the detached section of solid matter you happen to be aboard.”

Marsh, listening, looked at Cicely and felt that her father was right. Then he glanced up at the swelling sails of his creation and was not so sure. Romance, but of different sort, was contained in their sweeping curves, man's handicraft harnessing elemental forces and making them work for him.

He stepped then to the wheel and took it from the hands of the quartermaster, desiring for the hundredth time to get the feel and balance of his fabric. Cicely rose and joined him with a smile.

“You're like a young father, Marsh. Can't resist cuddling your baby, can you?”

“Well, every slant of wind is a little different.” He held the beautifully made wheel by one little finger on a spoke. “I'm wondering if she oughtn't to carry a stronger weather helm even in so fresh a breeze. I might change her trim a little.”

“Don't be fussy. Everybody says she handles perfectly.”

“Who is Smith-Curran?” Marsh asked abruptly. “I was talking to him last night. He knows boats.”

“Yes, and horses, and shooting and golf and bridge and billiards and all other indoor and outdoor sports, I should say. So does his daughter. Don't you think she's pretty?”

“Not very. Most times she looks too—well, grouchy.”

“Why not call it sulky? She can dance though.”

“Yes,” Marsh admitted, “like a professional.”

“I hope Barclay hasn't fallen in love with her,” Cicely said.

“No fear. Barclay will play true to form and marry in his own set,” Marsh said.

“I didn't say 'marry' her. I said 'fallen in love with her.'”

“I don't think you need worry. And if there was anything between them she'd be making some effort to please the family, and one might say she was doing almost the reverse.” He lowered his voice. “Look at her sitting there with her chin on her fist, glue eyed.”

“I will say she doesn't thaw much,” Cicely admitted. “I wonder why they're over here.”

“She told me last night that he was in shipping. He may want to buy vessels, or try to form some combine perhaps.”

“Barclay would scarcely have written such a warm letter to back a mere promoter. He takes his connection with the Court of St. James pretty seriously. You'd think the fate of the nation was in his hands.”

To Marsh this sounded like Barclay, who had impressed him as a young man to take seriously not only his position but himself. Barclay, so far as Marsh was aware, was flawless cap-a-pie. He didn't believe that from the time of his entering St. Paul's, through college and to the present day, Barclay had ever caused his father a minute of disquiet.

“I don't like to criticize a guest,” Cicely said, “but this Iona girl is getting on my nerves.... May I steer a little, Marsh?”

He gave her the wheel, to which she was thoroughly accustomed from previous yachts owned by her father. Stepping back, Marsh lighted a cigarette and looked at her and thought of Gertrude the Fair sailing her long ship off Helgoland. Cicely was of this Norse type in face and contour and coloring. Marsh was her opposite, physically. His lean face, straight black hair and dark-blue eyes were set over a heavy bony frame that was strongly thewed and sinewed, but gave the false impression of slenderness until stripped down for some athletic event. His restless night had left him a little haggard, but even the nervous condition into which he had recently worked himself, for no adequate reason, failed to banish his habitual expression of dry, sometimes sardonic humor, which was apt to be of the grim pioneer sort.

A phrenologist had once told him that his predominating trait would be ambition, not the ruthless sort, but based on the application of his proper gifts.

Perhaps this specialist was right, for as Marsh now let his eyes rest on Cicely there was a light in them that might have puzzled the casual observer. No woman looking his way would have said that he was in love with Cicely, or that his appreciation of her as she leaned there at the wheel against the rush of air was in any sense unworthy. Marsh was studying the girl much as he had studied the model he had made of the Trilby, and in a good deal the same state of mind, except that Cicely was not of his fabrication. But the critical approval and pleasure in so beautiful and perfect a creature was mingled with a subconscious personal ambition. He could not have helped but know that the Trilby was bound to further his advancement, set him farther on the road to success, prove tractable and always more his own possession than that of the individual who paid her cost and was her legal owner. Just so now with Cicely Marsh could not help but feel that she also might promote him on a line parallel to the professional one, so that the two would move forward side by side. He felt that the Trilby belonged actually to him and must belong always to him, because he had first imagined her, then proved her. And now he felt that so also might Cicely belong to him, because he so profoundly appreciated her, and might still prove her.

So intense was this conception that it seemed actually to penetrate the girl's mind, or at least a part of it did so. For she startled Marsh by turning to him with a smile and saying, “You must feel as if the Trilby were actually yours, Marsh, whatever father's claim.”

“No, not quite that.”

“Well, she is in a sense, just as a Michelangelo is always Michelangelo's, or a Titian, Titian's, no matter what museum or individual happens to own them.”

“How about mere appreciation,” Marsh asked—“a deep, profound, intelligent appreciation that is complete?”

“Well, that establishes a sort of ownership too. I always think of a certain musical composition as mine. I suppose that if such feelings could be weighed comparatively, the real ownership of anything belongs to the one who has the most complete appreciation of it.”

Marsh stepped back beside her at the wheel. His heart seemed for the moment to be playing tricks with him again. Cicely, glancing at his face, noted its pallor.

“What's the matter? Seasick?”

“No; just a little startled at the way you read my mind. I was thinking just that thing. More than that, it struck me suddenly that if what you say is true, then I must have a tremendous claim on you, Cicely.”

She gave him a quick look that combined amusement and surprise. Perhaps the remark struck her as a rather bold plunge under the conditions of time and place, and the group composed of Dodge, the bishop, Smith-Curran and Iona about ten paces forward of them on the deck. They were talking rather loudly against the rush of wind, and at this moment the bishop said in his resonant voice, “Yes, there is something about the sea that inspires daring—sometimes too much.”

Cicely laughed.

“Out of the mouths of bishops.”

“Well, you outlined the claim.”

“Only in the case of inanimate objects.”

“Then I'll advance the lines of argument.”

Dodge's voice reached them.

“——feel a bit of a pirate myself when I get off soundings, with no policeman in sight. Anyhow, you can't get arrested for speeding.”

“Now your father's said it.” Marsh's eyes twinkled at the corners. “So I'll just finish what I started to say—that if a complete appreciation does constitute a claim, like that established by the hand of the craftsman, then it includes you with the boat.”

“Once aboard the lugger!” Cicely mocked; her eyes were dancing.

“That's still another nine-tenths—possession. Even my nerve isn't quite up to that.”

“I'm surprised. All you have to do is to heave to, lower a boat and drive the others into it, then head out for open sea.”

“It's not so open as it looks. Besides, the only decent excuse for grabbing off a girl is to give her something better than she's got already, and that being the case, you are pretty safe.”

“I'm not so sure, Marsh. That would bill me for spinsterhood, wouldn't it?”

As if in answer to this, came Major Smith-Curran's officer-messy voice, a sort of staccato bark.

“Anyhow, what's the use of a lot of money if it doesn't get you what you want? Most times it doesn't, especially here in the States.”

Cicely laughed.

“I'll say——”

“Yes, everybody seems to be helping me out; but I don't seem to be getting to windward, at that.”

“Maybe you'd do better without so much help,” Cicely suggested. “But since you're trying to say something, just carry on, regardless.”

“Thanks. The big idea is that a man never seems content with what he feels himself merely to have earned. The figures prove that at this present moment the cup of my content ought to be brimful. And now I find that it's not.”

Cicely glanced at the hoist of the mainsail, which was a little aback, then gave the wheel half a spoke.

“How do you account for that?”

“Nobody to enjoy it with, and in all this world there's only one——”

From the bishop: “Yes, this is the day of opportunity, and we've got no lack of opportunists.”

Marsh groaned. Cicely looked at him and laughed.

“Listen!”

“An opportunist,” said Mr. Dodge, “is born, not made, like an artist; because it is an art, just as much as sculpture or painting or boat designing.”

“He's got my number,” Marsh murmured. “I'll shut up.”

“No, don't,” begged Cicely. “It's too lovely.”

“What's lovely?”

“You're trying to make me cry with these wise cracks going off. Hit the ball again, Marsh.”

“Well, then, since I'm cast for Mr. Shean in this sketch, I suppose I might as well swallow hook, bait and sinker. Last night while enjoying insomnia I finally doped it out that I was in the period of incubation of the oldest malady in the world and for the cure of which the Creator decided to give his gardener a long-haired assistant.”

“Is that all? Well, there are no lack of them nowadays to pick and choose from—though most of them are bobbed.”

“The lack is in the matter of choice,” Marsh said. “It was simplified for Adam.”

“——mutineers of the Bounty,” declaimed the bishop. “A remarkable instance of good coming out of evil. Worthy religious folk quite content to worship God on their little island. This modern twaddle of soul mates and affinities, the one woman for the one man. There are millions of women for every man. A mere matter of propinquity.”

“There, you see? Cheer up, Marsh.”

“The old fraud never found his. Too many, I should say, what with his wealth and looks and position. The next time I try to express my vain aspirations——”

“Vague aspirations, did you say?”

“No, I did not. I said vain.”

“Well, it sounded vague to me.”

“Oh, it did, did it?”

Marsh's choler began to rise, got well under way before his sense of humor caught up with it. He scarcely realized that here, actually, he was trying to make love if not propose to Cicely on the sloping deck of the schooner rushing under all the sail she could comfortably carry and within earshot of three philosophizing elders and a girl who, he began to feel uncomfortably, was taking notice without giving evidence of doing so. Marsh plunged. “There's only one woman for me, Cicely, and you might as well——”

“Yes,” said Mr. Dodge, taking up the rather idle argument. “As Saint Paul wisely observed, it is better——”

Marsh frantically went on, his Biblical knowledge telling him that here now was coming the final touch to the absurdity of his position.

“You might as well know it now as later.”

“How long have you known it, Marsh?”

“That doesn't matter. I know it now. Oh, help, here comes the last straw!”

Straw was scarcely the simile for Iona, who had risen suddenly and was moving toward them on the sloping unsteady deck with the perfect rhythm of a gymnast on a trapeze. It seemed uncannily to Marsh as if she had been listening in, a physical impossibility, and said to herself, “High time to stop this foolishness.” Instead she said, “I think your boat is a wonder, Mr. McQuentin, and Miss Dodge is a jolly good hand at the wheel.”

Marsh felt for the moment as if he would like to strangle her, do her physical violence. Iona, he was sure, had followed his difficult passage with Cicely by some sense of clairaudience and as closely as if within earshot. He had not once seen her glance in their direction while sitting with her elbow on the arm of the wicker deck chair, chin on knuckles, staring glue eyed, as he had said, at the water. Then perversely, at thought of laying hold of her for any purpose, to shake, throw overboard, the idea of such a contact set his heart to hammering. Certainly he must be in a ragged state of nerves, Marsh decided.

The smile on Cicely's lips did not match entirely the look in her gray eyes as she said, “Wouldn't you like to steer, Miss Smith-Curran?”

“May I? It's a long time since I've held a wheel.” She took the spokes relinquished to her, then looked at Marsh. “Perfectly balanced, isn't she?”

“Too much so in this breeze, I've been thinking.”

He raised his voice and ordered the jib and forestaysail sheets eased a little. This gave the schooner stronger weather helm.

The next tack would fetch them back across the Sound to the moorings. It was then about four o'clock. Leaving the wheel for the two girls to manage, Marsh joined the group of men, listened to a few more compliments while fuming inwardly and feeling baffled. But his eyes went frequently to Iona.

Standing at the wheel, she presented the best facet of herself Marsh so far had seen; not so much from the evident efficiency with which she kept the big sails filled to the brim and no more, but because the exhilaration of this effort and the rush of wind had swept away for the moment the expression of discontent that seemed to be a chronic one, in danger of disfiguring permanently a face that was more than merely pretty. Marsh had never before realized the ravages on a woman's looks that can be wrought by throwing on the screen of her features the projection of intolerant emotions. He wondered what Iona's trouble was—money, or a love affair gone wrong, or resentment at opportunities of happiness lost or wasted, or a sense of futility in her life.

She was younger by some years, he decided, than he had first thought; but even older possibly in experience. Now, for the moment, as if the humming breeze had blown away the disfiguring cobwebs, she gleamed out like a charming sculpture in tinted marble that, having previously stood for months in a closed house, had on its opening to let the sunlight in been cleansed and brightened. The grime, set in the shadow of its planes completely to alter the character of their lineaments, had been removed to make them gay.

The stately yacht nosed up to her moorings and the party went ashore. In the gig, Iona seemed to have relapsed again. Marsh had already observed that in company with others she had scarcely anything to say, indulged a taciturnity that verge on ungraciousness, as if she resented the obligation of any effort. He began to think her acceptance of the invitation had been under protest and that she had not wished that they avail themselves of Barclay's letter. Watching her surreptitiously, he noticed that her face darkened when her eyes rested on her father. More than that, there was an accent of misgiving contained in it, and a note of dread. It struck him that she was in some dread of what all this might be leading up to, possibly some service Major Smith-Curran might have in mind to require of his host and of a sort to put a strain on Dodge's genial hospitality.

Cicely proposed a swim. Her father agreed, but suggested that they go first to the house, to make one job of dressing for dinner. As they went ashore in the launch that served as gig, Marsh mentioned to Iona, sitting next him, that Cicely had won a number of swimming trophies, the last at Palm Beach when he had been there in February. Iona glanced at her hostess and nodded.

“She shapes up like a swimmer, full in the chest, with strong shoulders and long legs”—rather as if she were speaking of a steeplechaser, Marsh thought. The English had a bald way of putting things. He felt, though, that Iona for some reason was nursing along an antagonism for Cicely, as if anticipating a knock of sorts and ready to come back with the best she had. Marsh wondered why, and if it had anything to do with Barclay.

They went to their rooms to put on their swimming suits and towel robes. Marsh did not feel like getting into the water. He would rather have stretched out on his window seat, as the bishop had declared his intention of doing. Dodge and Smith-Curran were going in, the latter having stated in his staccato way that his ankylosed elbow, immobilized at a little less than a right angle, was a help rather than a hindrance in the water—fixed for a crawl stroke so that its flection was not fatiguing.

“Useful for a short jab or an uppercut, too,” he said with a grin.

Going down presently to the landing, Marsh found the others already there, for he had delayed a little to glance through some letters on his dresser. Dodge, Iona and Smith-Curran were in the water, bobbing about in the choppy waves a little off the float. Cicely had waited for Marsh, and as he came up she stepped onto the flat-topped rampart of the concrete jetty. She was the proper figure for a vigorous sea nymph. Iona had touched correctly if a little rawly on her specifications, Marsh admitted as he gave her a glance that did not linger, then stepped up beside her.

“Good water today,” she said. “A stiff breeze sweeps off the scum we get when it's calm. Too bad this lovely Sound's been made a big drain. Not much like Florida or Bar Harbor.”

Marsh, as they dived, decided that of the two it was more like the latter. The season had been late, and although the middle of July, the water was cold. Like most men without an ounce of blubber and whose press of work has interfered with sleep and exercise, Marsh felt the chill to which most women bathers seem immune, whether from more protective adipose or being habitually lighter clad or something. To react against it, he started to swim out more vigorously than was prudent for a man in poor physical training. Cicely forged past him.

“Let's swim off to the yacht,” she called.

“All right,” Marsh agreed.

He was warming up, and being normally a strong swimmer it did not seem as though the scant furlong to where the Trilby lay at her mooring ought to tax his endurance. He and Cicely had often swum twice that distance at Palm Beach. Marsh did not pause to reflect that cold water takes its tax in calories of energy as much as muscular effort does; and what was more important, he had been physically fit when South from tennis, golf and dancing where the oxygen was not exhausted.

Foolishly, now, he tried to keep pace with Cicely. They swirled past the others, when Dodge called something that neither heard. Then, some distance out, with Cicely a little in the lead, Marsh, who was swimming on his side, looked back and saw Iona's orange kerchief foaming up on the crest of a wave, and the upward flash of a round, gleaming arm.

Marsh perceived what was doing. Iona had guessed Cicely's purpose to swim to the yacht and now meant to beat her to it if she could. That was rather like Iona, he opined. But with a handicap of some thirty yards in a distance of about two hundred and twenty, it would take some doing to accomplish it, especially if Cicely saw what she was up to. The chances were, though, Cicely would in that case wait for Iona to come up abreast, then race her from the same scratch.

Evidently Cicely did not discover Iona at all. She had now settled down to work, got into her stride, as Iona might have said, and appeared to be trying only to see by how much she might beat Marsh. Her head was mostly buried. Marsh for his part threw caution overboard, determined that at least Iona should not overhaul him.

Then something happened to him. Things went suddenly black. His nicotinic heart began to do a jazz, a ragtime. Marsh, feeling himself on the verge of collapse, ceased his violent efforts, trying only to keep his air intake out of water. He knew that the trouble was neither muscular fatigue nor being winded as the result of such. His heart had started to play one of its recent tricks on him—what might prove a fatal trick at such a moment.

He could no longer see the yacht. Even the shore was blurred and indistinct. But his brain was clear enough. It warned him not to call out to Cicely for fear that his foundering involve her also. He seemed to have lost his equilibrium in the water, and his one desperate hope was that he might be able to paddle enough to keep himself afloat for a few moments until the faintness and vertigo should pass. Marsh knew that his distress was nothing in the nature of cramp, though no doubt the drowning of many a strong swimmer from similar cause has been inaccurately ascribed to cramp. Such a condition ashore would not be serious, unless a man happened to be scaling a cliff or something of the sort. But in water, cold or hot, it can prove fatal. It has been known to happen in a bathtub.

The blackness deepened. A wave splashed over Marsh's head. His balance was entirely lost. “Torped,” he thought bitterly, “just when coming into port.” He could not see, and his struggles were getting feebler. “Here's the end.” he thought drowsily, and at that moment a hand gripped his arm close to the shoulder.

“Don't struggle,” said a limpid voice. “Let yourself go. I've got you.”

Marsh obeyed. He was vaguely conscious that it was Iona holding him. He let himself sag and was dimly aware that she had slipped behind him and clutched both arms. His head seemed to be resting on her.

“Cramp?” she asked. Her voice came muffled, and from a distance,

“No, just faint.”

“That will pass. Try to take a few deep breaths.”

Marsh obeyed. For some reason he did not seem to care now whether he sank or not, nor if Iona sank with him. And then, as if the trick had failed and there were no longer reason to continue it, his heart got back in step again, fell into its normal stride. His vision began to clear. The slope of lawn that he was facing changed from a swirling purple blotch to its proper soft green, and the house took outline again.

Marsh became rapidly conscious of how his head was pillowed, and of Iona's rhythmic movements as she trod water. A wave of shame swept over him and acted as a stimulant. Poised as he was on his back, he began to scull with his hands.

“Keep still,” said Iona. “You're coming round. Be all right in half a mo'. Rest a bit longer.”

But the syncope had passed, and as his heart resumed its normal beat Marsh's strength returned full powered. It was, he thought, like a perfectly good marine motor of which a sudden jar had loosened the contact of an ignition wire without disconnecting it entirely. These recent attacks had been like that, never immediately recurring. The faintness had never lasted more than two or three minutes, though seeming many times that duration. Ashore, he merely paused to let them pass. But one could not pause on top three fathoms of water.

With strength restored, came a gust of humiliation. That also was in the nature of a spur. He freed himself brusquely from Iona's supporting hand and took a stroke or two that turned him facing her. This brought him also facing the yacht, about a hundred yards away, and he caught sight of Cicely reaching out for the stanchion at the foot of the accommodation ladder. Marsh wondered if she had seen. He looked then at Iona.

“Thanks, I'm all right now.”

“Better take it easy. Indigestion, I should say. Going in too soon after tea and crumpets on the yacht.”

“I've been having these little spells.” He began to swim slowly toward the yacht, Iona drifting easily beside him. “The doctor says it's coffee and tobacco.”

“Better chuck both for a while. You looked rather badly when we came ashore. You oughtn't have tried to keep up with Miss Dodge.”

“I managed to hold my own with her last winter, but I was pretty fit just then.”

“That makes all the difference. Hadn't we better swim back? It's not much farther and a lot better going with the wind and waves.”

“No, I'm all right now.”

Marsh spoke rather shortly. Iona said nothing. It struck Marsh then that he was showing scant gratitude for the saving of his life—as it was, he admitted, nothing short of that. If Iona had not grabbed him just when she did he would surely have gone down to stay. No three times about it when your heart quits work and your lungs have expelled their air; least of all, in a lean man of heavy, bony frame. The next time he rises is some days later, depending on the temperature of the water.

And here he was, Marsh reflected, carrying on again, thanks to Iona, and feeling sore about it instead of humbly grateful. There was something the matter with his sense of decency. He was not, for the moment, quite up to working out the psychology of the thing, which was that for some reason—Barclay, probably—there was ahead of them a catch-as-catch-can event between Cicely and Iona, and about which Marsh's partisanship must now be guarded. There was no getting round his obligation, nor was he the man to slack it. He had not called for help because afraid that with waning consciousness he might instinctively grab Cicely, to drag her down with him. But he had not seemed to care whether this happened to Iona.

All the greater the debt, and the sooner acknowledged the better. Marsh swam a little closer to Iona, who, as they neared the yacht, had edged away a little.

“You saved my life,” he said. “Another ten seconds would have done for me. I was sinking, and I'd have been down out of reach.”

“Well, it wasn't so ordained.” Iona slowed, almost stopped. “And there was no more danger to me than if I'd stood on the bank and fished you out with a line.”

“There was, though. I might have grabbed.”

“You're not the grabbing kind. So don't try to say any more about it. I'd rather you didn't, really. I hate fuss.”

“That doubles the score,” Marsh said. “I hope I'll have a chance to pay it some time—not with danger to you, of course.”

“Perhaps you may. But it doesn't matter a sou. Please promise to keep mum.”

“But why? It isn't fair to you.”

“I'm no medal hound. Besides, don't you see that Cicely Dodge would be frightfully sore?”

Marsh had not thought of that. Cicely, he knew, would certainly resent his not having called out to her, and even more his rescue by Iona, especially as the close shave was in large measure her own fault. Nevertheless, Marsh answered, “'Well, I can't help that.”

“You can help it—by keeping mum. Cicely would be angry with both of us. It doesn't matter about me; but it would be a pity on your account, because she's rich and beautiful and head over ears in love with you.”

“Oh, bunk!”

“She is, though. I think you're much too nice and clever for a pampered girl like that; but all the same, I believe you would make a good pair. Anyhow, on both our accounts, I want you to promise not to say a word about all this.”

“All right, if you insist. I promise.”

“Then that's that.” And as if to rest the matter there she started for the yacht again. Marsh, beside her, observed to his disquiet that Cicely had gone up the ladder and was not in sight.

III

IONA swimming sinuously and with no splashing at all, slipped ahead of Marsh as an otter might leave a dog. She reached the staging of the accommodation ladder and swung herself up and out as lightly as a gymnast gets on his horizontal bar.

Marsh, clambering aboard less gracefully—for grace would never be his forte—came on deck to find only a quartermaster forward and Iona aft. The crew was busy with such a supper as it had never got in the Skager-Rack.

“Where is Cicely?” Marsh asked.

Iona made a little gesture with both hands, drawing down the corners of her wide mouth.

“She must have seen us, after all.”

“No, or she'd have come back.”

“Unless she thought that we were merely playing London Bridge.”

“Oh, lollipop! She's got too much sense——”

He checked himself. Cicely's purple kerchief appeared in the companionway. Marsh had a momentary uncomfortable feeling of conspiracy, of secret understanding with Iona, which was, indeed, a fact. Then, as the rest of Cicely, in a peignoir, rose above the horizon of the hatch, Marsh glanced at her face and his vague misgiving crystallized.

A sacrificing druid priestess must have looked like that to her bound victim, Marsh thought.

“I've had swim enough,” she said briefly. Then, true to her form of hostess—“If you two feel the same about it, I'll have the steward bring up some gowns. Do just as you like, though. We've loads of time.”

Marsh seemed to catch a tinge of irony in the “loads of time.” Also, it was not true. Just before his collapse, Marsh had heard five bells struck aboard the yacht, and dinner was ordered, they had been told, for 7:30 that evening. So there was now less than an hour in which to swim back, go to the house and dress. Time enough, but not loads of it. Cicely could have gone below and looked through a saloon porthole, to see Marsh and Iona closely aligned, or paddling along as sociable as a pair of dabchicks in a mill pond, absorbed in a conversation that was not called back and forth in the the usual way of swimmers, but spoken at a range so close as to risk contact of kicking feet. Bathing as generally practiced today was, after all an amazingly intimate function, when one stopped to think.

And he, Marsh reflected, had started out to swim to the yacht with Cicely, swapping partners, as you might say, in the middle of the stream. That was now the rub. Worse, he had promised Iona to keep mum about the reason for it.

He looked at Cicely, and finding little in her face to cheer him on, cast a look of appeal at Iona. She totally ignored it, saying merely, “I like to rest a bit after a swim, so if you're going ashore in the boat I'll do the same.”

Cicely, without waiting to hear from Marsh, called to the quartermaster “Launch, Olsen,” then stepped to the companionway and touched the steward's bell. Marsh, nettled and in a spirit of perversity, stepped up onto the teak rail.

“Think I'll swim,” he said, and took a clean dive. It was not entirely perversity. He was unable to see how he could possibly enjoy riding ashore in the gig with these two girls. Also the situation was out of focus, blurred and confusing. He desired to escape.

He was quite himself again, and it was easy swimming with the waves. Regardless of his recent cave-in, he set himself a fast stroke, so that by the time the launch was hauled from the boat boom alongside with the two gowned figures aboard it, Marsh was well on his way. Dodge and Smith-Curran were still splashing about, waiting for the three others, to whom they desired to make some observations on foolhardiness.

The launch foamed past Marsh with no hurrahs. He was beginning to feel that he had first been made a fool of, then done it for himself. Rather worse than that, Cicely was very likely thinking him petty, to say the least, for having started to swim with her to the yacht, then, peeved at being unable to hold the pace, loitering to wait for Iona. And Iona was probably rating him pure imbecile, and vain at that, to have swum in alone after having just been dragged like a pup out of a fountain by herself. First caddish, then showing off, Marsh decided, and spat salty curses into the brine.

It must have seemed also to Cicely, if she did bother to look out the porthole, that Marsh had not only loitered to wait for Iona but kept on loitering after they came together—and pretty close together, at that, stopping to talk on their pleasant and desultory ramble alongside. Also it might have appeared to Cicely as if she had interrupted some exchanges of confidence when she came on deck.

Turning these things in his mind with rage, Marsh was dealt a harder mental jolt. Could Iona have foreseen this complication and played her hand accordingly? Had she stacked the cards on him in eliciting that promise to keep muffled his loud speaker? The idea was as largely illuminating as it was infuriating. Had he been hauled out of the bog only to be thrown into a trap? Iona, from the first, had impressed him as a trouble maker. He began now to believe that she was not only that thing but an expert at the job.

A little breathless, but by this time warm enough, Marsh went up the swimming steps rigged on the float in time to get the end of Dodge's paternal lecture.

“The next time I hail you, missy, just you heave to and listen. I don't holler for fun when I'm swimming, like a Sunday picnicker.”

To which Cicely answered coolly, “I'd have done so if I'd heard you, dad. But my head was mostly under water. It never occurred to me that you were going to worry about us.”

She started up the path for the house, something in her carriage suggesting the offended goddess. Dodge and Smith-Curran followed, Iona lingering to wait for Marsh. A nice ending to a pleasant swim, Marsh thought. He decided, however, to make no comment. After all, he did not believe Iona to be quite cat enough for what had occurred to him while swimming in. And there was no getting round the fact that she had saved his life and desired no credit for it. Why, when all was said and done, should she want to make trouble between Cicely and himself? This improved opinion of her grew stronger as they started to walk up the path.

“It's a rotten shame,” Iona said. “I never thought of her taking it that way.”

“Since she did, you might as well have told her the truth,” Marsh answered briefly.

“She wouldn't have believed me. Besides, I stall on apologies when anybody acts like that. Why didn't you tell her yourself, instead of doing a bunk, diving in like an idiot when you had just escaped getting your glim doused for good?”

“Because I am that thing, I guess,” Marsh retorted bitterly. “The sort that keeps his promise, no matter at what cost.”

“Well, then tell her if you like. It will only make things worse, though. What a horrid mess! But she'll get over it.”

“I'm not so sure—about her getting over it, I mean. Girls are such unreasonable beasts, especially rich ones.”

“Perhaps you had better not tell her then. The crosser she is with herself the more she'll blame us. So far, the blame is on you. But she would hate me if she knew I'd really saved your life. If she weren't in love with you she wouldn't care.”

“That sounds barmy to me,” Marsh said. He gave a short laugh. “And you call it love!”

“That's the workings of it. Smears a bit until it gets burned in, like indelible ink. She's in love with you and you're in love with her, so it's bound to come out all right.”

“I wish I had your faith. By the way, I don't think I've thanked you yet. Well, please accept my profound acknowledgments. Only for you I'd be on bottom now.”

Iona smiled.

“As I see it from my Oriental point of view, the obligation works the other way.”

“I don't get you.”

“That's because you're a citizen of the Western world. I've lived long enough in the Far East to sop up some of its philosophy. The Chinese reason that to save a life, especially from the sea, saddles the saver with the responsibility of its future.”

“Where do they get that stuff?”

“It's logic, when you stop to think. If you let a person drown, then his earthly troubles are over. But if you fish him out, then they are still ahead of him, like a little bear. So you see, you're my little bear.”

She turned on Marsh a smile that lighted her face wonderfully, then with a nod hurried on to join her father and Mr. Dodge.

(TO BE CONTINUED)