CHAPTER V

Hermione glanced down at the birds lying upon the sand.

"Since I have so wickedly and unfemininely slain them," said she, "I might as well take them along."

"Yes," Applebo assented; "besides, they are evidence against you."

Hermione tossed her head. "That makes no difference. I shall not deny having shot them. If I am a flirt and a poacher and a cruel and ruthless slayer, I am at least honest!"

"When caught," amended Applebo. He gathered up the plover, tossed them into the sack, and slung it on his shoulder, then took Hermione's gun from her slightly resisting hands.

"I can carry it..." she said.

"Let me," answered the poet. "It offends my sense of fitness to see you with a weapon in your hands. You do not need it; your eyes are quite enough."

"You have a singular gift for involved compliments," said Hermione.

"These are only truths, and the truth is always involved when told to a woman. That is the reason why so few of us tell it."

"Do you tell it?"

"In part. I find that more deceptive than lying." He turned, as though to walk back toward the beach. Hermione, newly-vexed that he should be the one to bring the interview to a close, took a pace which carried her past and ahead of him. The poet made no effort to catch her up. He strolled on, with the nonchalance of one taking a solitary ramble. Occasionally he paused to admire the early morning colours over the sea and marsh.

Several paces ahead of him Hermione paused and looked back over her shoulder. The poet was regarding her contemplatively. His eyes met hers and he smiled.

"You _are_ spoiled, aren't you?" said he.

"In what way?" Hermione demanded, hotly.

"In every way, it seems to me." Applebo regarded her thoughtfully. "Let's hurry. I want to write a poem about ... about ... lovely, conscious things that..."

"Come on, then..." Hermione interrupted. "You make me tired. Let's hurry back and you can write your silly poem and go into ecstasies over your æsthetic sensibilities ... just as my father does over his cooking, and, Heaven knows, a worse cook never spoiled a broth!"

"What!" cried Applebo. "But that's not fair! Have you ever seen any of my verses?"

"No," replied Hermione, greatly exulting in the lie.

"Then you are not fair ... naturally. But then, if you were, you would not be truly feminine. Never try to be. It is the secret of mondaine failure ... to be fair. As you have probably felt, instinctively ... being too young to have found it out in any other way. I will write a poem about you. I will call it 'The Petulant Poppy'..."

"Help...!" gasped Hermione.

"Don't you like the title?"

"But why 'Poppy'?"

"You look like a poppy ... with your black head and red kerchief. There are other reasons ... certain things connected with poppies. They are full of dope. How is it that you are permitted to knock around at this hour without a duenna?"

"I am not," Hermione replied. "This is strictly against the rules, and there is a bad time in store for me when I have to face Uncle Chris."

"Who is 'Uncle Chris'?"

"He is our sailing-master. Uncle Chris Heldstrom ... What's the matter?"

For the poet had stopped short in his tracks and was staring at her with an expression which Hermione found almost startling. The long eyelashes, which were several shades darker than his tawny hair, swept up, opening to their fullest width, and the yellow eyes blazed at the girl with a sudden, vivid intensity. Hermione, startled and fascinated, stared back in wonder, and under her inquiring gaze the blood faded from the face of the poet, to leave it of a distressing pallor.

But only for an instant or two did this last. Back came the rich, ruddy saffron; the eyelashes swept down, and the poet caught a deep breath and blinked at her, then smiled. The transformation was like that which one sees in a cat watching a canary, then suddenly surprised by some member of the household.

"What made you look like that?" demanded the girl.

Applebo blinked several times, then shrugged.

"Did I look surprised? It struck me as a bit odd that you should call your sailing-master 'Uncle Chris,' and be in dread of his displeasure. I have seen him. He is merely a Norwegian sailor, is he not?"

"He is that and more," retorted Hermione. "He is the most splendid man that ever lived! The sort of stuff that is sung of in old sagas..."

"What do you know about sagas?"

"A great deal. Uncle Chris has taught me a lot about Scandinavian legend and folk-lore. He is one of those big-hearted, big-souled men with the high courage of an early sea-king and the heart of a child ... or better, perhaps, a mother. He has been a mother to my sisters and myself." She glanced curiously at Applebo. As if to evade her scrutiny, he turned away, but not before she had caught a sudden gleam from his amber-eyes, which had darkened again and were almost veiled, in their habitual manner. Hermione also observed that there was a dark, smoky flush, which extended up the strongly-muscled neck, to disappear under the clustering mane about his ears, and that the big chest was rising and falling more forcefully than their easy pace would seem to warrant.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked, curiously.

He turned to her slowly.

"Do you think," he asked, "that your 'Uncle Chris' was ever more than a common sailor, to begin with?"

"Christian Heldstrom was never a 'common' anything!" replied Hermione, with some heat. "But so far as that goes, he was born of a good, though poor, Norwegian family and went to sea because he liked it and had to do something. I know very little about his early history. He does not like to talk about it. Why does it interest you? Are you--like some other people whom I have known--so snobbish as to be shocked that three young ladies should have been nursed and tended and taught deportment by their father's Norwegian sailing-master? Let me tell you, his manners are far better than papa's ... and papa is an F.F.V.!"

She looked at him truculently. Nothing could arouse Hermione to such quick and torrid resentment as any slight on her beloved "Uncle Chris." Wherefore, she turned her dark, violet eyes challengingly upon the poet.

"You look like a Scandinavian yourself," said she.

"My mother," replied Applebo, "was a cousin to the King of Sweden."

Hermione stopped short to stare at him. Her eyes opened very wide, also her carmine lips were slightly farther apart than strict deportment would approve.

"Really...?" she cried. "And your father...?"

"She married beneath her. It was an infatuation followed by a wedding and an elopement. Of course, she sacrificed her rank. They came to America. It is a long story, and both of my parents are now dead. Applebo is the name of an uncle who made me his heir ... he was a Swede. I don't know why I am telling you all of this; perhaps it is because I don't want you to think that I am a snob. I would rather you did not tell anybody, if you don't mind."

"Of course not!" replied Hermione. "But I would like to hear more."

"Just now your own affairs are more important. You had better get back aboard as soon as possible or your sailing-master may put you in the brig. What would he say if he saw you walking on the beach with me? It's rather a delicate situation ... considering my unsolicited attentions of the past three months."

Hermione's piquant face took on a very rich tone of red. Without answering, she began to walk rapidly toward the beach ... so rapidly, in fact, that the first few steps carried her on in advance of her companion, who seemed tranquilly determined to set the pace himself. Hermione glanced back over her shoulder.

"Since you are in such a hurry to get rid of me," she said, "why don't you hurry?"

"I was admiring your walk. It must be a family accomplishment ... inherited from your mother, no doubt. Your father walks like a duck."

"Thank you ... on the part of all of us. Does my walk remind you of Hermione?"

"Not in the least. Hermione walks like a gossamer borne by the breeze."

"And I stump along like a watch-officer."

"No. Your feet are coquetting with the earth. Hermione had no feet. She was borne by invisible wings. I rather fancy that every part of you coquettes with everything it touches. You were making love to the snipe you had just slaughtered when the game-keeper collared you. I was watching from the sedge."

"You were!" cried Hermione. "And you never interfered...?"

"Pardon me ... I did interfere ... when I thought that there was a chance of your loading him full of lead. You see, I swam ashore to contemplate the early sunlight on the marsh in order to receive certain impressions which might lead to a poem. Then you came along and spoiled it all..."

"Thanks..."

"Please do not interrupt. If you don't like what I am telling you, just say so and we will talk of something else. I will tell you how beautiful you are. That is, no doubt, a hackneyed subject, but perhaps I can find a new way of putting it..."

"Please don't be silly. Go on. I came along and spoiled it all..."

"Utterly. I was chock-a-block with æsthetic appreciation. I was delighting in the smell of salt sedge and piny perfumes, revelling in the music of joyous bird-calls, loving the companionship of snipe and curlew and plover ... free-winged sea-nomads like myself, exulting in my human solitude, getting warm after my swim, chewing tobacco..."

"What!"

"The fifth sense. I had had no breakfast, and I am very fond of chewing tobacco ... when alone. Please don't interrupt. Everything was perfect ... and then you came..."

"And spoiled it all..." Hermione's small nose, already tampering sadly with the classic in its modernly rebellious tip, became even more artistically anarchistic.

"Oh, very well..." Applebo's voice expressed polite fatigue. "If you _will_ interrupt. I love the shade of your bathing suit. It makes you look like a Nereid ... who has found a copy of _l'Art et la Mode_ chucked off _La Provence_, and got discontented with algæ. Shall I describe your ravishing face? Black storm-clouds your hair, and beneath the snow of your forehead falling into the ultramarine sea of your eyes; a sea so deep and fathomless that..."

"Shut up!"

"_Pardon_..."

"Close your face!" snapped Hermione.

"Very well. Only, it's not my fault. You would shove your oar in..."

"Do you think that is a nice way to speak to a lady?"

"I am not talking to a lady. There are lots of ladies. I am talking to a modern reincarnation of Artemis, who, as you probably do not know, was the ancient Greek personification of physical sweetness and purity, whom the brutal Romans had the cheek to degenerate into Diana, a bloodthirsty goddess of killing things ... snipe or plover or game-keepers or pilot-fishes ... or..."

"Oh ... please ..." Hermione looked as if about to break down. "Must I remind you that ... that ... I've had rather a trying ... morning of it..."

"Cécile..." cried the Pilot-fish. "I'm sorry."

Hermione found no particular stimulant in his sorrows, but the "Cécile" acted very tonically. Up went nose and chin again.

"Then drop personalities and go on with what you were saying about the way I spoiled it all. Your æsthetic revels ... and the tobacco and the rest..."

"Well, then," continued Applebo, "I was so content with everything as it was that when you came and began to kill my little snipe, and spoil their music with a fusillade, and swamp the odours of resin and marsh with fumes of sulphur and saltpetre, and obscure the landscape with smoke and generally put things on the blink..."

"That was easy for you..."

The poet waved his hand. "I swallowed my little cud..."

"What...! Excuse me... Pray go on..."

"I was wild with indignation. Especially as I recognised you..."

"You did...?"

"I said, 'Here is that pampered beauty, Cécile Bell, not content with breaking up all the men who know her ... or ought to ... must come over here and kill these little birds and smell up the marsh...'"

"Oh, come..."

"Well ... that acrid powder, you know. Therefore, when I saw the keeper stalking you, I was tickled to death."

"And you'd have let him run me in...?"

"I felt like helping. But when he got nasty I sympathised with you. He was right. You were wrong all the way through..."

"_Merci!_ And you?"

"I was wrong, too. I should have let him take you to the superintendent. It would have done you good in so many different ways."

"Why didn't you...?"

Applebo gave her a quick look.

"I couldn't," he said, and looked straight into her eyes.

Hermione's heart gave a sudden, tremendous throb. In that quick little "psychological moment," which lasted only as long as it took their eyes to meet, wonderful changes were wrought. Or perhaps they were not changes, but only the crystallising of instincts and emotions some few thousands of years older than Hermione. At any rate, what scientists would call "empirical symptoms" were most pronounced. Every little dormant cell of the many millions which go to make a Hermione ... or any of the rest of us ... suddenly awoke and began to shout for something which was owed it, and for which it felt, for the first time, a strong and immediate need. This is a clumsy way of trying to express what sentimentalists call "love at first sight," which, when all is said, is really no more than the love of a pussywillow for the first promise of warmth to come, with no consideration of intervening frosts. For good or bad, that was what happened to Hermione, and all of the many queer, complex emotions found their resultant in a quick, primitive impulse of which the keynote was to make the man beside her say, with truth, that nothing really mattered but herself.

This, Mr. Applebo politely declined to do. Having instincts of his own, and a decency peculiar to the cat family, he merely blinked at Hermione and waited for her to start that most ruthless of all duels which cynics have tried to misinterpret as "love."

"Then you only interfered," said Hermione, "because you thought that I might have shot the keeper. It wasn't that you wished to render a service to a woman. It was merely a general humanitarian desire to prevent bloodshed ... a tragedy."

"Nope."

"What?"

"It wasn't that. You would not have shot him. Never! He would have dragged you weeping and half clothed..."

"Never!"

"Yes. That was what I wanted him to do. But when the time came I changed my mind. At least, I changed my behaviour. My mind is still the same. You were quite in the wrong. The game-keeper was right ... and meant to obey orders if it cost him his life. But you would not have shot him. I had no real fear of that, and theoretically, I wanted him to march you off and teach you a lesson. But when you threw that despairing look around, something brought me to your aid with a rush. I could have broken his neck without a twinge of compunction. He rather expressed my feeling when he said, '... tha'ar's the he-one!'" Applebo laughed. "I felt like that ... as though I were some wild creature and my mate was in trouble ... I beg your pardon, Cécile..."

Again the rush of emotion, followed by the cold shower. Hermione's pulses seemed filled with wine and her youthful body with that warm, intoxicating glow, incomprehensible as it was delicious ... when there came that "Cécile," and she felt like the hot iron plunged by the smith into his tub of water. No doubt, the tempering process was good for her, but she did not like it, and hissed a little, just as does the glowing metal.

"Then it wasn't chivalry," she snapped, "but a sort of primitive male instinct."

"Absolutely. A woman with a gun and a lot of slaughtered little plover is no inspiring object for chivalry ... which is, after all, principally a masculine pose. But she may awaken other sentiments. That is what you have done. I no longer regret Hermione and my rejected verses ... and that reminds me that you have not yet told me that I might transfer my attentions to you. I think that you are the most lovely creature that I ever saw, and you might awaken lots of tenderness, if you would. I am sure that I could write exquisite things to you. I would feel them, too ... which I never did toward Hermione..."

Poor Hermione! The poet was snatching her from one emotion to another in a manner most upsetting. Pique kept her from telling him then and there that she was not Cécile; that she was Hermione ... the object of three months' poetic effusion on his part, unrecognised in her true personality and unjustly vilified as a heartless coquette. Instinct told her, however, that the more he abused Cécile and deplored Hermione's heartless conduct, the worse he would feel when he learned the truth, and Hermione meant that his punishment should be thorough. A full-natured woman inherits from her primitive forbears a good deal of antagonism for the heart-compelling male, and so far Hermione had not struck back. She meant to do so effectively, when the time came. Applebo was awakening her to many new sensations, but she was very far from being conquered.

So she tossed her pretty head and remarked:--

"Verse does not appeal to me except in an impersonal, purely mental sort of way. If that contents you, go ahead and write it by the running foot. Like Hermione, I am not very keen about long-distance devotion. If you transfer your attentions to me, there will be certain responsibilities attached. The first is that you call and meet my family in a purely conventional way."

Mr. Applebo looked scared.

"Oh ... in that case ... perhaps ... do you suppose that your sister Pauline..."

"Paula," corrected Hermione, icily.

"Paula ... quite so. I wonder if Paula would mind if ... if..."

Hermione stopped short and stared. The colour flooded her face. She was suddenly the prey of a violent desire to do the man beside her a physical damage. She felt that she would like to snatch the gun from his hands and bang him over the head with the stock. Applebo looked at her and blinked.

"Don't be angry," said he. "I would never have the nerve to go aboard the _Shark_. I'm an awful coward about most things. Besides, I hate the idea of being listed on your collection. I wonder what you would label me..."

"'Fool's gold,'" snapped Hermione.

"That would be unjust to yourself, if I were yours," answered the poet, sleepily. "All love is pure gold ... but often there is a lot of base metal alloyed. I love you, Cécile." He blinked.

Hermione laughed.

"Then go and smelt out the alloy," said she. "That consists principally of a deep and sincere affection for Mr. Applebo."

She turned to look at him, her head critically aslant. The poet looked back. Hermione's heart began to misbehave again, and a delicious colour burned warmly through her clear, olive skin. Her deep, violet eyes looked almost purple in the crimson sunlight pervading the early morning air. Her chin was slightly raised, and her red lips invitingly apart as she waited for his reply. Without in the least suspecting it, Hermione looked like a girl who defies the kiss which she fully intends to get.

Had the poet acted like a man ... or a scoundrel, as one prefers to look at it ... and kissed Hermione then and there with that enthusiasm which her prettiness and the situation as a whole appeared to warrant, there is absolutely no telling what might have happened. Instead of which, Mr. Applebo's face grew sleepier, and his eyes blinkier than ever, while the look which he threw at Hermione was full of appreciation of a purely impersonal character.

"Huntington Wood smelted out his alloy," he observed. "Instead of bewailing his ill-fortune and howling for sympathy, he went off and started a Home for Sick Babies. Now he is back again ... pure metal. Do you suppose that it will do him any good?"

Hermione felt that she would like to employ some of her father's forceful sea-going expressions. Here was Cécile popping up again to spoil everything at the most interesting moment! Yet not for the world would she point out to him his silly mistake. She intended that this disillusionment should come as a _coup de théâtre_, which would leave the poet in a state of collapse. So she swung smartly on her heel and shrugged.

"Huntington Wood no longer offers his gold ... and nobody can blame him," said she, and resumed her walk toward the beach.

They skirted the pine-scrub, passed along the edge of the marsh, then crossed the strip of sand and rock to the beach. The tide was at the last of the ebb, and as she glanced toward the spot where she had left her boat, Hermione gave a little cry of dismay.

"Look...!" she cried; "it's gone...!"

What had happened was so plainly sketched on the open page of the beach that one could run and read. Several yards above the water's edge was indicated the place where Hermione had grounded on landing, as was shown by her own tracks, left from the spot where she had stepped ashore. From farther down the beach came another trail, a man's, running to where the skiff lay, while a long furrow and some deeply gouged foot-prints showed where he had run the skiff down to the water's edge. Here, before the present rim of the tide was reached, all vanished, as though boat and man had taken flight into the air.

Hermione threw a frightened look at Applebo. The poet was standing straight as an Indian, his bushy eyebrows drawn down, and his lips puckered.

"That swine of a game-keeper...!" he growled, in his deep, though husky, bass. "I wish that I had broken his neck. Why didn't I think about his swiping the boat? I _am_ a fool!"