The Firing Line

"That's it! First, a man must have a mind to make up; then he must have enough intelligence to make it up."

"Certainly," nodded Hamil.

"I'm glad you understand me," said Portlaw, gratified. "Alida understands me; why, do you know that, somehow, everything I think of she seems to agree to; in fact, sometimes—on one or two unimportant matters, I actually believe that Mrs. Ascott thought of what I thought of, a few seconds before I thought of it," he ended generously; "but," and his expression became slyly portentous, "it would never do to have her suspect it. I intend to be Caesar in my own house!"

"Exactly," said Hamil solemnly; "and Caesar's wife must have no suspicions."

It was early November before he returned to town. His new suite of offices in Broad Street hummed with activity, although the lingering aftermath of the business depression prevented for the time being any hope of new commissions from private sources.

But fortunately he had enough public work to keep the office busy, and his dogged personal supervision of it during the racking suspense of Shiela's illness was his salvation.

Twice a week his aunt wrote him from Sapphire Springs; every day he went to his outdoor work on Long Island and forced himself to a minute personal supervision of every detail, never allowing himself a moment's brooding, never permitting himself to become panic-stricken at the outlook which varied from one letter to another. For as yet, according to these same letters, the woman he loved had never once mentioned his name.

He found little leisure for amusement, even had he been inclined that way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed and complicated tasks to be accomplished before the advent of another night.

He lived at his club and wrote to his aunt from there. Sundays were more difficult to negotiate; he went to St. George's in the morning, read in the club library until afternoon permitted him to maintain some semblance of those social duties which no man has a right to entirely neglect.

Now and then he dined out; once he went to the opera with the O'Haras; but it nearly did for him, for they sang "Madame Butterfly," and Farrar's matchless voice and acting tore him to shreds. Only the happy can endure such tragedy.

And one Sunday, having pondered long that afternoon over the last letter Malcourt had ever written him, he put on hat and overcoat and went to Greenlawn Cemetery—a tedious journey through strange avenues and unknown suburbs, under a wet sky from which occasionally a flake or two of snow fell through the fine-spun drizzle.

In the cemetery the oaks still bore leaves which were growing while Malcourt was alive; here and there a beech-tree remained in full autumn foliage and the grass on the graves was intensely green; but the few flowers that lifted their stalks were discoloured and shabby; bare branches interlaced overhead; dead leaves, wet and flattened, stuck to slab and headstone or left their stained imprints on the tarnished marble.

He had bought some flowers—violets and lilies—at a florist's near the cemetery gates. These he laid, awkwardly, at the base of the white slab from which Malcourt's newly cut name stared at him.

Louis Malcourt lay, as he had wished, next to his father. Also, as he had desired, a freshly planted tree, bereft now of foliage, rose, spindling, to balance an older one on the other corner of the plot. His sister's recently shaped grave lay just beyond. As yet, Bertie had provided no headstone for the late Lady Tressilvain.

Hamil stood inspecting Malcourt's name, finding it impossible to realise that he was dead—or for that matter, unable to comprehend death at all. The newly chiselled letters seemed vaguely instinct with something of Malcourt's own clean-cut irony; they appeared to challenge him with their mocking legend of death, daring him, with sly malice, to credit the inscription.

To look at them became almost an effort, so white and clear they stared back at him—as though the pallid face of the dead himself, set for ever in raillery, was on the watch to detect false sentiment and delight in it. And Hamil's eyes fell uneasily upon the flowers, then lifted. And he said aloud, unconsciously:

"You are right; it's too late, Malcourt."

There was a shabby, neglected grave in the adjoining plot; he bent over, gathered up his flowers, and laid them on the slab of somebody aged ninety-three whose name was blotted out by wet dead leaves. Then he slowly returned to face Malcourt, and stood musing, gloved hands deep in his overcoat pockets.

"If I could have understood you—" he began, under his breath, then fell silent. A few moments later he uncovered.

It was snowing heavily when he turned to leave; and he stood back and aside, hat in hand, to permit a young woman to pass the iron gateway—a slim figure in black, heavy veil drawn, arms piled high with lilies. He knew her at once and she knew him.

"I think you are Mr. Hamil," she said timidly.

"You are Miss Wilming?" he said in his naturally pleasant voice, which brought old memories crowding upon her and a pale flush to her cheeks.

There was a moment's silence; she dropped some flowers and he recovered them for her. Then she knelt down in the sleet, unconscious of it, and laid the flowers on the mound, arranging them with great care, while the thickening snow pelted her and began to veil the white blossoms on the grave.

Hamil hesitated after the girl had risen, and, presently, as she did not stir, he quietly asked if he might be of any use to her.

At first she made no reply, and her gaze remained remote; then, turning:

"Was he your friend?" she asked wistfully.

"I think he meant to be."

"You quarrelled—down there—in the South"—she made a vague gesture toward the gray horizon. "Do you remember that night, Mr. Hamil?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever become friends again?"

"No.... I think he meant to be.... The fault was probably mine. I misunderstood."

She said: "I know he cared a great deal for you."

The man was silent.

She turned directly toward him, pale, clear-eyed, and in the poise of her head a faint touch of pride.

"Please do not misunderstand his friendship for me, then. If you were his friend I would not need to say this. He was very kind to me, Mr. Hamil."

"I do not doubt it," said Hamil gravely.

"And you do not mistake, what I say?"

He looked her in the eyes, curious—and, in a moment, convinced.

"No," he said gently.... And, offering his hand: "Men are very ignorant concerning one another. Women are wiser, I think."

He took the slender black-gloved hand in his.

"Can I be of the least use to you?" he asked.

"You have been," she sighed, "if what I said has taught you to know him a little better."

A week later when the curtain fell on the second act of the new musical comedy, "The Inca," critics preparing to leave questioned each other with considerable curiosity concerning this newcomer, Dorothy Wilming, who had sung so intelligently and made so much out of a subordinate part.

Nobody seemed to know very much about her; several nice-looking young girls and exceedingly respectable young men sent her flowers. Afterward they gathered at the stage entrance, evidently expecting to meet and congratulate her; but she had slipped away. And while they hunted high and low, and the last figurante had trotted off under the lamp-lights, Dolly lay in her own dark room, face among the pillows, sobbing her heart out for a dead man who had been kind to her for nothing.

And, at the same hour, across an ocean, another woman awoke to take up the ravelled threadings of her life again and, through another day, remember Louis Malcourt and all that he had left undone for kindness' sake.

There were others, too, who were not likely to forget him, particularly those who had received, with some astonishment, a legacy apiece of one small Chinese gilded idol—images all of the Pa-hsien or of Kwan-Yin, who rescues souls from hell with the mystic lotus-prayer, "Om mane padme hum."

But the true Catholicism, which perplexed the eighteen legatees lay in the paradox of the Mohammedan inscriptions across each lotus written in Malcourt's hand:

"I direct my face unto Him who hath created.

"Who maketh His messengers with two and three and four pairs of wings.

"And thou shall see them going in procession.