Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905. Various
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not common in the little town. It is always the exotic we prize in our conservatories.
This summing up of French’s outer man was not Deena’s estimate, as she watched his approach – she was too familiar with his appearance to receive any especial impression. She accepted his apologies for his cigar and for keeping her waiting with an indifferent air, and turned once more toward the sea.
CHAPTER II
The beach at Wolfshead was pebbly, with rocks thrown untidily about and ridges of blackened seaweed marking the various encroachments of the tide. Stephen brushed the top of a low bowlder with his handkerchief and invited Deena to sit down.
“You would be more comfortable,” he said, “if Ben would come with the cushions.”
“I am quite comfortable without them,” she answered, “though I cannot but resent the Paul and Virginia attitude of the young Minthrops. One would think a year of married life would have satisfied their greed for tête-à-têtes. I wonder whether they would continue sufficient to each other if they really were stranded on a desert island.”
“Could you be happy on such an island with the man of your heart, Mrs. Ponsonby?” asked Stephen.
And Deena, feeling that Simeon was perforce the man of her heart, and that he was quite unfitted to live on sea air and love, answered, smiling:
“Not unless there were a perfectly new flora to keep him contented.”
Stephen saw his opportunity to make his communication, and said, quickly:
“I suspect you have been reading those articles of Simeon’s in the Scientist on the vegetation of Tierra del Fuego. They are very able. He ought to go there and verify all he has gleaned by his reading. We fully appreciate we have a remarkable man at Harmouth in our professor of botany.”
Deena colored with pleasure.
“Poor Simeon,” she said; “his limited means have stood in the way of such personal research, and then, also, the college holidays are too short for extended trips.”
“Let him throw over his classes in the cause of science,” said Stephen, with excitement. “Why, such a book as Simeon would write after an exploration of – Fuegia, let us say – would place him among the scientists of the world.”
The thought that raced across Deena’s mind was what dull reading it would be, but she recognized the impropriety of the reflection and said, simply:
“It is too bad we haven’t a little more money.”
Stephen put his hand in his breast pocket and half drew out a letter, and then let it drop back, and then he walked a little apart from Deena and looked at her thoughtfully, as if trying to readjust his previous ideas of her to the present coquetry of her appearance. The way her thoughts had flown to Simeon when a desert island existence was mooted seemed as if she did care, and Stephen hated to give pain, and yet the letter had to be answered, and the opportunity was not likely to occur again. The thing he had always admired most in his friend’s wife was her common sense – to that he trusted.
“Mrs. Ponsonby,” he said, boldly, “if Simeon had a chance to do this very thing – free of expense – would you be unhappy at his desertion? Would you feel that the man who sent him to Patagonia was doing you an unkindness you could not forgive?”
“I should rejoice at his good fortune,” she answered, calmly. “The fact that I should miss him would not weigh with me for a moment.”
French gave a sigh of relief, while his imagination pictured to him a dissolving view of Polly under similar circumstances.
“The Argentine Government is fitting up an expedition,” he went on, “to go through the Straits of Magellan and down the east coast of Fuegia with a view of finding out something more exact in regard to the mineral and agricultural resources than has been known hitherto. I happen to have been in active correspondence for some time with the man who virtually set the thing going, and he has asked me to send him a botanist from here. Shall I offer the chance to your husband? He must go at once. It is already spring in that part of the world, and the summer at Cape Horn is short.”
Deena’s face grew crimson and then paled. She felt an emotion she could not believe – pure, unalloyed joy! But in a second she understood better; it was joy, of course, but joy at Simeon’s good luck.
“Could he get leave of absence right in the beginning of the term?” she asked, breathlessly.
And Stephen answered that he had never taken his Sabbatical year, and that some one could be found to do his work, though it might mean forfeiting half his salary.
Here they were joined by Polly and Ben, and as Deena made no reference to the subject they had been discussing, the talk wandered to general topics.
The sun was making long shadows and the hour to start was come. The gayety of the morning deserted Deena as they sped back to Harmouth. Her brain was busy fitting her ideas to this possible change that French had just foreshadowed, and though she was silent, her eyes shone with excitement and her color came and went in response to her unspoken thoughts.
In her mind she saw Tierra del Fuego as it looked on the map at the end of the narrowing continent, and then she remembered a picture of Cape Horn that had been in her geography when she was a child – a bold, rocky promontory jutting into a restless sea, in which three whales were blowing fountains from the tops of their heads. She reflected that it was very far away, and that in going there Simeon might encounter possible dangers and certain discomfort, and she tried to feel sorry, and all the time a wild excitement blazed in her breast. She felt as if her youth had been atrophied, and that if Simeon went it might revive, and then a great shame shook her to have allowed such thoughts, and a tender pity for the lonely man she had married obliterated self.
Stephen’s voice broke in upon her reverie.
“Have I depressed you, Mrs. Ponsonby?”
“No, no,” she answered. “I am only considering ways and means. I want him to go. We might rent our house for the winter, and I could go home to live. Count upon my doing everything in my power to make Simeon’s going easy, Mr. French.”
“You are admirable,” said Stephen, with genuine satisfaction. He even half put out his hand to give hers a grasp of approbation, but thought better of it. If she had had her hair parted in the middle, and had been mending Ponsonby’s stockings under the drop-light in her parlor, he might have done so, braving the needle’s point; but, looking as she did to-day, it seemed safer to refrain.
It was six o’clock when the auto stopped at Deena’s door.
“I wish she had shown a little more emotion at his going,” was Stephen’s reflection as he helped her out, forgetting how he had dreaded any evidence of distress; but he only said:
“May I come back to tea, Mrs. Ponsonby? I should like to talk this over with Simeon to-night.”
She acquiesced with an inward misgiving; it was the first time, she had ever given an invitation to her own table, but it was her husband’s friend, and she was still excited. As she exchanged good-bys with her sister and Ben, Polly suddenly remembered to tell her something quite unimportant.
“Oh, Deena!” she whispered, bending over the side of the automobile, “when I came to pay for your hat today, I found I hadn’t enough money, and I knew you wouldn’t like me to explain the circumstances to Ben, so I told them to send the bill to you and we will settle it later.”
“I’ll settle it!” said Deena. She was a proud woman, and hated favors that savored of cash. “Good-night – I am afraid you will be late in getting to Newbury Hill for your dinner.”
“All aboard, French!” shouted Ben – and they were gone.
Deena stood for a moment and watched the retreating machine before she followed the path to the front door. A great deal that was pleasant was disappearing with its puffs – Ben’s gay spirits and Polly’s ready sympathy, which, if superficial, was very soothing – and the money power that made them what they were, which, in fact,