“Good heavens!” came a voice from the hammock. “It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself!”
The poet looked up quickly with an expression of the keenest disappointment. What he saw was a young woman of twenty-three or four with rather ordinary brown hair, a clear, high brow, fine dark eyes and a full pleasant face divided in the middle by a delicately thin nose. Not a displeasing sight, surely; but the poet’s tone was certainly one of displeasure as he took a step forward and observed:
“Oh, it’s you. Where did you get that dress?”
“Why, I... well, I’m not surprised. I’ve often said you’re crazy.”
“What right have you got to wear that dress?”
“Well! It’s ‘a poor thing, but mine own.’ It came from Herbert, on Fifth Avenue, if you must know. And now, my dear Paul, perhaps you’ll explain why you’ve taken to climbing through windows to slide down drainpipes and ask your lady friends where they buy their clothes.”
The poet grunted, seated himself on the grass beside the hammock and hugged his knees.
“It deceived me,” he said dismally.
“I thought it was someone else. Dress exactly the same. And I wanted to speak to her, and Helen had me locked in the room, so I came that way. It was all for nothing, and now I can’t get back. Got a cigarette?”
“It’s Kitty Vreeland,” said the young woman with a laugh. “But where is your poet’s observation? See these stripes? Kitty hasn’t any. And the cut is entirely different.”
“I can’t help it; I’m not a costume designer. Anyway, I couldn’t see from the window. What day is today?”
“Friday.”
“Is she coming? Helen wouldn’t tell me.”
“No. She’s spending a week at Newport.” The young woman added maliciously, “And I believe Massitot is there, too.”
“I don’t care,” replied the poet indifferently, “as long as she’s not here. I just wanted to look at her. Who’s coming?”
“I don’t know — Helen’s usual crowd.”
“Wortley, Townsend, Crevel?”
“I suppose so.”
“And Richard the Great?”
“I really don’t know. Oh, it would be absurd to pretend not to know who you mean. Only it’s ridiculous.”
“Of course.” The poet looked up amusedly at the little frown on her brow, then smiled softly to himself. “Of course it’s ridiculous. Really he’s no greater than any of the others, only he thinks he is, and it’s the same thing. You see, Janet, you must look at it as he does. At twenty-seven he set out to do a certain thing, and at the end of six years he is nearer his goal than most men can get in a lifetime. He has made lots of money, and he has developed a power. He is a strong man, measured by the requirements of the modern arena. What if he is conceited in his strength? So is every man who has any. So am I.”
“But why do you say all this to me?”
“Because you ought to hear it. I see things. I am a poet. I won’t be one much longer, because I’m beginning to get clever, and that is fatal. It’s my accursed laziness. I was composing today, and I had Richard Gorrin in mind.
... until he saw and heard her,
Then his heart trembled, and all his strength was weakness.’ ”
“Good heavens! Not Richard the Great!”
“Certainly.”
“But that’s impossible!”
“By no means.”
“You don’t know him, my dear Paul.”
The sudden note of bitterness in her tone caused him to look up at her, and his glance was so quick and unexpected that he caught the smile, equally bitter, on her lips, before she had time to erase it. He looked away again, and his expression of amusement gave way to one of thoughtfulness.
“You don’t understand,” he said, presently. “I don’t mean that his strength turns into weakness. The contrary. When his heart trembles with love his weakness is his real strength. It’s a good thing we’re such old friends, Janet. No man likes to explain his verses.”
“Especially when they’re absurd.”
“Absurd!”
“I mean, in this particular instance. You don’t know Mr. Gorrin. He is all strength. He has no weakness.”
Again the bitter note; and something else — was it wistfulness, regret, sorrow? Not exactly, perhaps, but something very like it.
“Of course!” cried the poet, leaping to his feet. “Of course! That’s it! I should have seen it before! The trouble is, Janet, you’re too intellectual. You need a grain more of womanish intuition. No, don’t pretend with me. Don’t you think I see things? Don’t you think I know when a woman’s in love? Only I couldn’t understand—”
“Paul... please—”
“No, no, no! And you think Richard Gorrin is all strength. How funny! I can see him now; I can hear him, with his offers to protect and cherish. How funny! There’s a great deal too much strength about, Janet. You’re as bad as he is. I really think I must change that line to something more comprehensive.”
“Paul, I am positively going in unless—”
“No, you’re not. Wait a minute, I want to think. One thing, of course, would be very simple — I don’t know — I may try it — yet, I will! It will be very funny, and it will prove I’m right. It’s a good thing we’re old friends, Janet; you won’t mind my experimenting.”
The poet paused to brush back his hair into a semblance of order, approached the hammock so that he stood directly in front of her, and bowed formally.
“Miss Beaton,” he said, “will you marry me?”
“Well! Really—”
“No, you must answer ‘yes.’ Of course you don’t want to, but neither do I, and I’ll break it off tomorrow. A poet never keeps a promise anyway, and I’m not in love with you, so you may know I shan’t hold you to it. Will you marry me? Say yes. It’s an experiment. Will you marry me?”
The lady’s lips were parted in an amused smile.
“Yes, my dear poet,” she said.
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“Good!” He took her hand and kissed the fingers. “Then that’s understood. We’re engaged. You’ll see I’m right. And now, of course, you want to be left alone to think; they always do. As for me, I’ve got two hours till dinner to repair that infernal line, and in forty minutes the train arrives with Richard the Great and the rest of them. I will retire with my newfound happiness; and by the way, Janet, next time you camp out under my window wear a different dress. It’s confusing.”
And so he left her.
Four hours later Miss Janet Beaton was back again in the hammock. It was night now, and all you could see of the shade trees was a great mass of dark blotches against the starlight in the sky, save where a shaft of yellow rays fell here and there from a window of the house. It was a cool, fresh evening in early June, and Miss Beaton had wrapped a mantle about her shoulders to keep off the dew.
Around a corner of the house, from a distance, sounded the faint cries and bursts of laughter of those who were playing tennis under the electric lights on the courts; others of the weekend guests had taken boats on the lake. Miss Beaton had managed with some difficulty to separate herself from the crowd, and had sought refuge here to think. She lay back in the hammock looking up at a lighted window — the same window through which the poet had clambered that afternoon, and behind which he was sitting now, tinkering with words.
“It was very silly,” mused the lady in an undertone. “I had no idea he meant to tell everyone. And if he really thought that Richard Gorrin could be jealous — but how childish! He didn’t mean that at all. Anyway, it was amusing to see their faces—”