SWEET-AND-TWENTY

What Sylvia replied to Orr’s communication, whether indeed she replied at all, Annandale was not informed.  He himself wrote to her.  The letter was long; it was also abject.  But he got no answer.  He wrote again.  The result was the same.

Then both at her and at himself he rebelled.  He had supped on humiliations.  He had no appetite for more.  With some bravery, yet without bravado, he tore a leaf from his life and on it wrote Finis.  The epitaph was figurative, but he thought it final.  He thought that he could dictate to Fate.  It is a mistake that many make.

Presently it surprised him to find how laborious is the task of putting people out of your life.  If you have cared for them they will come back.  In the pages of a book, in the pauses of speech, suddenly you behold them.  In sleep they will not let you be.  When you awake, there they are.  However detestable their behavior may have been, in dream they visit and caress you.  It takes time and vigilance; it takes more, it takes other faces to disperse them.

In spite of the Finis, Sylvia Waldron declined to be dismissed.  She haunted Annandale.  To memories of her he could not always show the door.  Sometimes they were masked.  Occasionally they reproached him.  Again they seemed to say that did he but find out how, all might yet be well between them.  But usually they came and stood gazing at him in love and grief eternal.

Then he would start.  But what could he do?  Besides, there was the Finis.

June meanwhile had come and gone.  Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal had battened on the town.  It is said that the hottest place in the world is a port on the Persian Gulf.  But it is wrong to believe everything we hear.  When New York decides to be hot, the temperature of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison.

One fetid noon Annandale fled.  When he stopped it was at Narragansett.

Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming.  There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face powder, a heaving, heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged with ozone and desire.

In August the hotels are packed.  The stretch of sand is a stage.  Every day a ballet is given there.  The coryphées are the prettiest girls in the world ­girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say “Drink me.”

At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, breasts the waves to the laugh of brass and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets.

After the dip, other diversions.  Primarily flirtations on the lawns; later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms, more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace below.

The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor.  From a kiosk a band of Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own delirious czardas.  There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas of Japan.

Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wandered into silences and shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss when holding hands in the dark.

To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too free and easy.  To Annandale, it was distressing.  Everywhere there was love, yet none for him.  He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is locally termed, because of Newport’s propinquity.  If Sylvia so much as signaled he could join her at once.

As yet no signaling was apparent.  In its place was an influx of a reflection of fashion.  The influx made Annandale swear.  He hated to be seen stalking moodily about.  He hated still more to have the rupture of his engagement discussed.  The ballet on the beach irritated him.  He told himself that he had come to the wrong shop.  One day he thought of joining friends in Canada.  The next he thought of joining friends who had gone abroad.  The day after he thought that still he might be signaled.

In these uncertainties he loitered, annoyed but sober.  Since the visit from Orr he had not touched a drop.  Then, it so fell about that one evening he looked in at a dance at the Casino.  Madness was in the air.  The savors of the sea, the tonic of the dip, the stare of the harvest moon, go to the head, stir the heart, excite the pulse in a manner really Boccaccian.

Madness is contagious.  It seemed particularly catching that night.  The hall was filled, the gallery flushed.  On a stage, at the end of the ballroom, musicians were tossing out in trailing rhythm the sorcery of “Il Bacio,” the invitation of the “Cent Vierges,” the muffled riot of “El Capitan.”

To these incentives couples turned.  Beneath the gallery where Annandale stood there was a vision of white arms, bare necks, slender waists circled by the blackness of men’s sleeves.  Three hundred girls and men were waltzing together, interchanging partners, clasping hands, gazing into each other’s eyes.

Behind Annandale a group had gathered.  They were talking, yet of what he did not heed.  But, presently, into the conversation filtered the freshness of another voice.

“I quite believe, you know,” the voice was saying, “that a girl who stops here this summer will stop at nothing next.”

At the jest Annandale turned.  There, pretty as a peach but rather more amusing, stood Fanny Price.

“Hamlet!” she exclaimed.

Annandale resembled the Dane as little as he did the devil.  He was fully aware of that.  But he was equally aware that he must seem blue.  He straightened himself and smiled.  Then at once it occurred to him that Fanny might be a signal bearer.

“How do you do?” he said.  “Don’t you want to come and sit on the terrace?  When did you get here?”

“Just now.  I am over from Newport.  They told me there that I ought to come in disguise.  They call it slumming.”

“Yes,” Annandale inanely and eagerly replied.  Of the little speech he had caught but one word ­Newport.

“Now, if I go with you, will you give me something pink, something with raspberries in it?”

Fanny, as she spoke, disengaged herself from the people with whom she had come.

“You saw Sylvia, didn’t you?” he asked, when at last through coils of girls and men they reached the terrace below.

Fanny nodded.  “Suppose we sit here,” she said, indicating a table from which grew a big parasol.

“Did she say anything?”

Fanny sat down.  Annandale seated himself by her.  “You know?  Don’t you ?”

“Oh, yes,” Fanny interrupted.  “But then ­”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.  Only it is so much better so, don’t you think?”

“Better!” Annandale fiercely repeated.

“Why, yes.  You and Sylvia were totally unsuited for each other.  She is the best and dearest girl in the world.  But ­here is the waiter.  Will you tell him to fetch me a lemon squash?”

Annandale gave the order.

“With raspberries in it,” Fanny called at the waiter’s retreating back.  “Aren’t you going to take anything?”

In deep gloom Annandale shook his head.

Fanny laughed.  “Drink delights you not; no, nor woman either.”

“You see ­”

“Yes, yes, yes.  Of course I see.  But why cannot you?  Why can’t you see that you and Sylvia stood as much chance of hitting it off as though you both spoke a different language?  A break was bound to come.”

But now the man appeared with the squash.  Fanny looked at it.  “Only two raspberries,” she cried.  “And such little ones.”

“Bring a dish of them,” said Annandale.  “I suppose,” he resumed as the waiter again retreated, “I suppose she will find somebody with whom she can hit it off.”

“Yes, of course.  There is me and there are other girls.  But the men will be few.  They will be elderly, I think, and I think, too, tame enough to eat out of her hand.”

“You think, then, that I am out of the running?”

Fanny did not answer.  She was drinking the squash.  When she put it down she put with it the subject.  It bored her.

“Are you going to be here long?” she asked.  Until a moment before Annandale had been wavering.  But now his mind was made up.  Or he thought it was.

“No.  I am off tomorrow.”

“Where to?”

“The North Woods, perhaps.  I am not sure.”

“If you are not sure, you cannot be in any very tearing haste.  Why not stop a day or two longer and take me about?”

Annandale looked at her.  In the look was surprise; inquiry, too.

“Yes.  Why not?”

Annandale’s look deepened into a stare.

“Now, don’t be stupid,” said Fanny, to whom such stares were familiar.  “I am not trying to get up a flirtation with you.  But I must have someone to talk to.”

“I like to hear you talk.”

“Yes; men always like nonsense.”

“Only from a pretty girl, though.”

“Do you know,” said Fanny, rising from beneath the big parasol, “the waiter didn’t bring the raspberries.  No matter now, though.  I must go and find mother.  This is no place for her to be out alone.”