Chapter 9 OUT OF HIS DEPTH

Markham stammered something, but Olga was laughing softly. "Hermia, darling, you always do go into things feet first, but it's perilous in French heels. Mr. Markham and I were just trying to decide whether this stone bench wouldn't be just the place to do your portrait. If you'll observe-"

The situation was so palpable. Hermia looked from one to the other amusedly. Markham was following Olga's artistic dissertation with the eye of dubiety, but their hostess was merciless.

"Olga, dear," she inquired sweetly, "did you know your back hair was down?"

"Oh, is it? How provoking! Georgette is positively worthless!"

Even Olga's resourcefulness was not proof against Hermia's persistent audacity, especially as she was aware of a smudge of face-powder on John Markham's coat lapel which could not have been attributed by any chance to the deficiencies of her unlucky maid.

"Poor Georgette!" said Hermia softly, watching Olga's fingers quickly twist the erring strand into place.

At this moment there was a sound of footsteps on the walk and Reggie Armistead, who, like an ubiquitous terrier, had at last found the scent, came down the arbor on the run with Trevvy Morehouse after him, a poor second, and emerged upon the scene.

"You're mine-" cried Reggie triumphantly. "I win!" He moved forward and would have caught Hermia around the waist, but she dodged him.

"Reggie," she cried, "how dare you!"

"Oh, don't mind us," laughed Olga.

"I don't-" he said stoutly. "But I got here first, Olga, didn't I?"

"You surely did-"

"I'm glad to have witnesses. Hermia's dreadfully slippery, you know."

Olga, who had dropped into a corner of the stone bench, looked up languidly.

"Would you mind telling us what it all means?" she asked.

Hermia laughed. "May I, Trevvy?"

The excellent Trevelyan smiled politely and shrugged his shoulders.

"By all means-since I have no further interest in the matter."

"It's too amusing. They were to give me ten minutes' start from the house-the two of them. Oh, what a lark!" she laughed. "I made for the Maze, while they watched me from the drawing-room windows; but instead of going in, I skirted the edge and crept through the bushes on the other side. By the time they had reached the privet hedge, I had gone through the house from the kitchen to the terrace again, where I sat for ten minutes entirely alone laughing and watching those geese chasing each other around in the moonlight. I've never had such fun since I was born."

"Geese! Oh, I say, Hermia!"

"Then Reggie came out sniffing the breeze and I had to run for cover, so I slipped over the balustrade to the pergola, down which I crept on my hands and knees and dropped through-and here I am," she concluded.

"But what is it all about?" asked Olga again.

"It means that Hermia is mine-for a month," said Reggie, glowing. "She promised-you couldn't go back on that, Hermia. Could she, Olga?" he appealed.

"I'm sure I don't know. Do you mean engaged to you?" she asked curiously.

"Yes-for a month," said Reggie. "The idea was to try and see if she really could like either of us well enough to-"

"I didn't really promise anything," Hermia broke in, severely. "I merely agreed-"

"She did, Olga," he insisted. "I knew she'd be trying to wriggle."

Olga was laughing silently.

"You're admirably suited to each other, you two. You're actually quarreling already."

"We always do-"

"Then marry at once, my dears."

Hermia glanced at Markham, who was leaning over the back of the bench watching the scene with alien eyes. She turned toward Armistead frankly with an extended hand, which he promptly seized.

"You are a nice boy, Reggie. I'll try it. But you'll have to promise-"

"Oh, I'll promise anything," cried Reggie rapturously.

The excellent Trevelyan watched them a moment in silence, and then lighting his cigarette slowly wandered away.

Hermia and Armistead followed hand in hand, but not before Hermia had turned her head over her shoulder and whispered mischievously to Olga:

"You can sit as many risks as you run, Olga, darling."

In the moments which had passed during this interesting revelation Olga Tcherny had been thinking-desperately. The taste of life had never been so sweet in her mouth-nor so bitter. With the departure of the trio Markham had not moved, but his eyes followed the two figures through the rose garden. The moon was suddenly snuffed out and the sea grew lead-color-like a passion that has gone stale. Markham's silhouette loomed monstrous against the sky, and the silence was abruptly broken by the rough laughter of Crosby Downs from somewhere in the distance. Olga shivered and rose.

"Come," she said, "let's follow."

Markham straightened slowly and stood before her, one hand on her arm.

"Olga," he said quietly.

She paused, but she didn't look up at him, and gently she took his fingers from her arm.

"It's a pity-" he stopped again. "What you said was true. You-and

I-one of us has killed the old relation between us."

"Yes," she murmured.

"Can we forget-to-night-"

"No, no," she said. "Never. I know."

"Will you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive."

He shook his head.

"Nothing to forgive if you were only amusing yourself-much to forgive if you really care"

His ingenuousness was alarming.

"Par exemple!" She bantered him. "You mean that I-that I love you?"

"Yes, I mean just that."

She took quick refuge in laughter.

"You are the most surprising creature! Much as I esteem, I cannot flatter you so much as that." And she drew away from him, still laughing softly.

"I have done you a wrong," he went on steadily.

His simplicity was heroic. She did not dare question him.

"You have a New England conscience, mon ami," she said, gently ironical. "Your code is meshed in the cobwebs of antiquity. One kisses in the moonlight-or one doesn't kiss. What is the difference? It is a pastime-not a tragedy. Je M'amusais. I fished for minnows and caught a Tartar-voil tout. I love you-I do love you-but only when you paint, monsieur l'artiste-then you are magnificent-a companion to the gods! When you kiss- Oh, la la! You are-er-paleozoic!"

It was Olga's master stroke. She could parry no longer and must thrust if she would survive. The tenderness that this gaucherie aroused in her made her the more merciless in her mockery! And she was aware of a throb of exaltation as she made the sacrifice which prevented the declaration that was hanging on his lips. In making a fool of him again she was saving him from making a fool of himself. Markham did not reply and only stood there gnawing at his lips. He was no squire of dames he knew, and what she said of him touched him on the raw of his self-esteem. Paleozoic he might be, but it stung him that she should tell him so.

She delivered his coup de grace unerringly.

"Take my advice and let love-making alone, or if you must make love, do it as other gods do-my messenger. Otherwise your Elysian dignity is in jeopardy. You are not the kind of man that women love, mon cher. Come, it is time that we joined the others."

She led him down the avenue of roses, every line of her graceful figure rebuking his insufficiency, and he followed dumbly, aware of it.

Upon the terrace occupied by couples intent upon private matters, she promptly deserted him, leaving him without a word to his own devices. He stood for a moment of uncertainty, and then fumbling in his pocket for his pipe, which was not there, went into the smoking-room in search of a cigarette.

"Two spades," declared Archie Westcott at the auction table, and then when Markham went out, "Odd fish-that."

"Three hearts," said Mrs. Renshaw. "Why Hermia asks such people I can't imagine. You're never certain whom you're asked to meet nowadays. Prig, isn't he?"

"Oh, rather! Has ideals, and all that sort of thing, hasn't he, Hilda?"

"If his ideals are as rotten as his manners I can't say much for 'em."

"Olga likes him-"

"Oh, Olga-" sniffed Hilda. "Anything for a new sensation. Remember that queer little French marquis who trailed around after her at Monte Carlo?"

"Oh, play ball," growled Gouverneur. "Who cares-so long as he keeps out of here."

Unaware of these unflattering comments, Markham strolled out of doors and into a lonely armchair on the terrace, and smoked in solitary dignity. Indeed solitude seemed to be the only thing left to him. He was not a man who made friends rapidly, and the three or four people whom he might have cared to cultivate had other fish to fry to-night-and were not frying them on the terrace. Olga, it seemed, had no intention of returning and Hermia Challoner was doubtless already in that happy phase of experimentation so warmly advocated by Reggie Armistead.

He envied those two young people their carelessness, their grace, their ruddy delights which by contrast added conviction to Olga's indictment of him. He tried with some difficulty to analyze the precise nature of his sentiments toward Olga Tcherny, and found at the end of a quarter of an hour, to his surprise, that the only feeling of which he was conscious was one of dull resentment at her for having made a fool of him.

Whatever Markham the painter had accomplished in the delineation of character of the fashionable women he had painted, the truth was that Markham both feared and misunderstood them. Their changing moods, their unaccountable likes and dislikes, their petty ambitions and vanities he accepted as part of the heritage of a race of beings apart form his own, and he hid his timidity under a brusque manner which gave him credit for a keener penetration than he actually possessed. And, strangely enough, Fate, with sardonic humor, had given him a knack, which so few painters possess, of catching on canvas the elusive charm of his feminine sitters, of investing with grace those characteristics he professed so much to despise. He had told Hermia Challoner that he did not paint "pretty" portraits, but as Olga knew, it was upon his delineation of beauty, his manipulation of dainty draperies, the sheen of silk and satin, that his reputation so securely rested. It was perhaps merely a contemptuous cleverness which had given him the name among his craft of being a "master brushman."

Into Olga Tcherny's portrait he had put something more of his sitter than usual. He had painted the soul of the girl in the body of the woman of thirty, and if he rendered his subject in a manner more stilted than usual, he repaid her in the real interest with which her portrait was invested. He liked Olga. He had accepted her warily at first until he had proved to his own satisfaction the disinterestedness of her regard and then he had given her his friendship without reserve, his first real friendship with a woman of the world, conscious of the charm of their relation from which all sentiment had been banished.

He had awakened rudely to-night. He was now aware that sentiment on Olga's part had never been banished nor could ever be banished with a woman of her type. He had made the mistake of judging her by the records of their friendship, unmindful of her history as to which he had been forewarned.

To-night the secret was out. The feminine in her had been triumphant. He was a different kind of fish from any she had caught and for reasons of her own she wanted him. She had been playing him skillfully for months, giving him all the line in her reel that he might be hooked the more easily. And to what end? Their friendship had fallen into shreds. What was to follow?

Of one thing he was certain. He was learning something, also progressing. In the twelve hours that had passed he had kissed two women-something of a record for a man of his prejudices. He rose and threw the unsatisfactory cigarette into the bushes. It was high time he was making his way back to Thimble Island and solitude.

There was a rustle of silk behind him, and he turned.

"Oh, do stay, Mr. Markham. I was just coming out to talk to you."

He greeted Hermia with delight, quickly responding to the charm of her juvenility.

"I was wondering if I would see you again," he said genuinely.

"You see," she laughed, "I don't always pop in feet first." She sat and examined him curiously, and then, after a pause.

"What a fraud you are, Mr. Markham!"

"I?"

"A deep-dyed hypocrite-I can't see how you can dare look me in the face-"

"But I can-and I find it very pleasant."

"Oh-shame! To take advantage of my childish credulity-my trusting innocence. You make me believe you to be a fossilized pedant-a philosopher prematurely aged-willing to barter your hope of salvation for a draught of the Fountain of Youth-and I find you making love to my chaperon and most distinguished woman guest! And I was actually offering to teach you! Aren't you a little ashamed of yourself?"

"No, I think not," he said slowly. "You know Madame Tcherny is a very old friend of mine."

"So she is of mine. She's a perfectly adorable chaperon-but then there are limits even to the indiscretions of a chaperon."

"Do you think it quite fair to Olga-" he began.

She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him mischievously.

"Oh, Olga is quite capable of taking care of herself. It isn't Olga

I'm thinking about at all. It's you, my poor friend. Did you know

that Olga has the reputation of being quite the most dangerous woman in

Europe?"

"All women are dangerous. Fortunately I'm not the kind of man such women find interesting."

"I'm not sure that I know just what kind of a man you are, Mr. Markham. In your studio I inclined to the opinion that you had most of the characteristics of an amiable gorilla; on Thimble Island you seemed like Diogenes-without the tub; to-night you're Lothario, Bluebeard, and Lancelot all in one."

"I'm afraid you flatter me. First impressions are usually correct, I think. I'm an amiable gorilla. Perhaps by the time you visit my studio again, I may have reached the next link in the chain to the human." He laughed and then quickly turned the conversation to a topic less personal. "You will visit my studio next winter, won't you?"

"Of course. You're to do my portrait, you know? But I was hoping that you might stay on and paint it here at 'Wake-Robin'!"

He looked off toward Thimble Island a moment before replying.

"I'm sorry I can't. I have some engagements in New York and my passage is booked for Europe early in the month. I leave Thimble Island almost at once."

"Oh, that's unkind of you. Don't you find it sufficiently attractive here?"

"Yes, I do. Unfortunately, I can't consult my own wishes in the matter."

She had been examining him narrowly.

"You don't want to stay, Mr. Markham," she announced, decisively.

He looked her in the eyes, but made no reply.

"We're not your sort, I know. But I thought that with Olga here-"

"It has been very pleasant. I am glad to have had the privilege-"

"Don't, Mr. Markham. The truth is," she went on, "that you came here because you thought you ought to be polite. You go because you think you have been quite polite enough. Isn't that true?"

"Figuratively, yes," he replied frankly. "I'm not gregarious by instinct. I can't help it. I suppose I'm just unsociable, that's all."

"Oh, well, I'm sorry," she said, rising. "If you won't stay-shall I see you again?"

"I think not. I'm leaving early."

"Oh," with a stamp of her foot. "I have no patience with you!"

"You see," he shrugged, "I don't wear well."

They reached the hall and she gave him her fingers.

"I wish you all the happiness in the world," he said quietly.

She glanced at him quickly.

"I'm always happy. You mean-"

"Your engagement to Mr. Armistead."

Her lips curved demurely.

"Oh, of course-Reggie and I will get along-we'll manage somehow-but a month is a long while-"

"But life is a longer while-"

"Yes-it is-too long-"

There was a note in her voice he had not heard before. He glanced at her inquisitively, but she went up the steps, one hand extended over the baluster to his, laughing mischievously. "Good night, Mr. Markham. Thanks for the breakfast-and the philosophy. But please remember that people who love in glass houses-shouldn't cast aspersions."