RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
"I CAN make any woman the rage!"
"Bet you a fiver I can put you on to one you won't."
"Done! I'm up to it. Lead on!"
The small group of men near the door laughed. Under other skies, both boast and bet would have aroused their indignation. Here, in the Islands of the Eastern Pacific, they accepted the situation as purely natural. The germ of inertia that lurked in the perfect climate was an effectual check to any attempt to screw up the nature to a high standard of nicety. The moral pegs gave out at a touch. The impulses that swayed the actions of Society could easily be reduced to their least common denominator of frivolity.
But, despite the moral mush, the charm of the scene was undeniable. Two sides of the ball-room were open to the purple velvet night. The air was soaked with perfumes, and luminous with moonlight that drew inky shadows on the white coral paths, and threw into stronger relief the scarce dimmed hues of the tropical flora. The Island was perfect as when God had made it on Creation-Day, even though man had pressed it into his service to stage French farce.
Many eyes watched the progress of Wyndham North—the man who had made his boast—as he threaded his way through the whirl of dancers. Although guiltless of any degree, he was a Bachelor of Arts. Indeed, it was only by the exercise of arts that he remained a bachelor at all. His vanity was daily fed by the incessant siege on his celibacy. Half the women in the Island adored him. The other half hated him; but they were merely the first half in the second stage.
A minute later he was bowing to a girl in a home-made dress of Indian muslin. Conscious of his boast, his lazy eyes focussed her with unusual scrutiny. The first glance told him that his words would require some backing, for he knew instinctively that he was confronted with perfectly hopeless material. He had expected some girl—plain, or even ugly, of the Island type—with irregular features and sallow skin, yet with a redeeming touch of diablerie in her eyes. Anything but a consignment of English provincial stodge!
Unity Hill and her waist measurement were apparently about twenty-six together. She was shapeless and colourless. Her complexion was pale and clear, her hair mousy-brown, and her eyes grey and placid.
North looked at her with genuine dismay, as he asked for a dance. She stood up with alacrity, and amused eyes watched their progress round the room. It was evident that North, who was a featherweight waltzer, found his partner heavy on hand. All smiled to see him let in. Levity gave way to astonishment, however, at the end of the dance, when North, with an unruffled face, walked off with his partner to a screened nook.
"What's the attraction?" one man asked another. "Thought North had earned a drink, if ever man did. Any cashthere?"
"Great Scott, no! That's Miss Hill—the missionary-fellow's sister. Haven't bothered about an introduction, but if North—"
Wyndham North's boast was no idle one. He had all the women of the Island on a string. Men wondered at his popularity, for they principally saw the side of him that was cad. Their womenkind were unable to enlighten them, either from lack of knowledge or from a surplus. But if they could not call North a good man, they all called him a good fellow, and unconsciously followed his lead whenever he shifted his facile fancy.
As North fanned Unity Hill silently while he recovered his forces, she scanned his handsome, clean-shaven face with interest. She had already picked him out from the other men in the ball-room. Moreover, she had not failed to notice the battery of feminine eyes in her direction, and she felt pleased with her small triumph.
"How do you like the Islands?" asked North. languidly, after having decided that a conversational effort would not be required.
"Not very much, from a social standpoint," was the serene reply. "So far, I've met so many women, and I don't care about them. I'm so much more at home with men."
North gave his strangled mirth decent burial. He had often heard that speech before, but from a different type of woman. This girl was labelled in plain figures a tea-fight, plain-sewing, dearest-friend specimen.
"That's quite obvious," he answered, feeling subtlety would be wasted. "So you see a good many men in—where do you live?"
"Daleside, Cumberland. The sweetest place. Six hundred inhabitants. I wouldn't live anywhere else. And I should think I do see men. To begin with, I have a father and seven brothers. I do everything for them. Then I help a lot in the Sunday-school; I take a class for grown-up youths; and there's a curate and a male superintendent. And I do a heap of work for the Young Men's Christian Association. But I hope I'm not shocking you?"
She was doing better work than that—she was amusing him.
"I'm certainly rather thin-skinned in these matters," he said gravely. "But, if it's not too risky, and you think I can safely resist tho shock, do tell me a little about the Young Men's Christian Association. There's something reckless about it, to my mind."
Unity took him at his word. At the end of half an hour he could have run a Young Men's Christian Association on his own. He had also been exhaustively enlightened as to the tastes and characters of the seven brothers, and initiated into the manufacture of their favourite pudding.
North, who had epicurean tastes, experienced a disquieting sensation as he listened.
"Suet? Boiled suet?" he asked. "And they eat it, and come for second helpings?"
"And third and fourth. They have the old-fashioned kind of treacle over it, remember!"
"I remember something of the sort at school. What a treasure you must be! 'Feed the Brute!'"
North's face was slightly dazed when, at last, he re-entered the ball-room... A beautiful girl, who had been staring in his direction, veered sharply round, and gave him a very good view of bunched-up, pearly-white shoulders. Taking no notice of this display of pique, he hurried up to where a tall, weather-beaten woman was sitting against the wall. Her low grey satin dress made her features look hard and wooden. Instinctively, one dressed her in a short, leather-bound skirt, surrounded her with otter-hounds, and planked her large feet inches deep in an English stream.
This was Mrs. Jack Leroy, the wife of the Commissioner, and the leader of the Island Society....
"Come outside with me, and have a smoke," whispered North.
Mrs. Jack rose instantly. People wondered at the friendship that existed between the pair. Mrs. Jack was about the nearest thing to a typical English gentleman on the Island, and possessed the necessary masculine intuition to cause her to pill North from decent society.
She looked severely at his profile, as it reddened in the glow from his cigarette. His white linen coat and crimson cummerband glimmered in the shadow..
"Well?" she demanded shortly. "Ashamed of yourself? You've behaved outrageously to-night."
"Don't be a coward! A great, strong woman like you, to bully a weak little object like myself. Besides, I'm not fit to stand it. I've just been talking to a girl—a girl with a stodgy soul! "
He gave a groan. Mrs. Jack grew stiffer.
"Does it never strike you," she asked, " that you're something of a cad?"
"What? Well! Well, I'm— Ah well, if I'm a cad, why do you bother yourself about me? You're at liberty to cut me, aren't you?"
North recovered his calm with a mouthful of smoke.
Mrs. Jack's tanned fingers tightened round her cigarette.
"If you were ten years younger, I'd like to thrash you. It's Amy Duveen now. Not much escapes me. You cut some of her dances this evening, eh? I sized up her looks. Good gracious, man, isn't the prettiest girl in the Island good enough for you, without dropping her like a hot biscuit, for the sake of a fresh face? I've no patience with you!"
North laughed indulgently.
"Oh, you women —how you talk. Pray Heaven you'll never get the Vote! Now, seriously, Mrs. Jack. You know I like you. I want to be straight with you. Amy Duveen? We know that sort of Society girl—you and I. Brought up and sent out here with one object—to be got off. A good match imperative. Well, haven't I made her the fashion? Would Tony Steel have got keen if I hadn't made the pace? And would she accept me—even if I proposed?"
Mrs. Jack knew the right answer to that. But she also knew that North had no intention of proposing. So she gave the wrong answer, which, in the circumstances, became the right.
"Certainly not."
"There you are! So, what harm have I done? What harm do I do? That girl to-night—the stodgy-souled one —once I've fairly started her, she won't hug the wall so much. I deserve a medal, not a dressing-down."
Mrs. Jack shook away his hand.
"No," she cried fiercely. "I must speak. Dead against the grain, but I've got to pound home the truth. Heaven knows, I hate to say it, for every man is possessed of twice his proper share of conceit. But, North, girls, when they're young, often have perverted tastes. They eat slate-pencils, and starch, and so on. Later on, they fall in love with the wrong sort of man—wasters, no earthly use to the planet, or to them. That's how it is with these silly girls—and you."
North wiped his eyes.
"Go on," he said in a weak voice. "You over-rated the danger of my getting swelled head from your remarks."
"It's no laughing matter. You are—not to mince matters—you are attractive. You make hot love to a girl for a fortnight, and then it's off, and forgotten—by you. The girl doesn't forget so easily. Take it from me, there are tears that only her pillow knows of, and heartaches that defy the tightest lacing. It hurts. North—it hurts!"
"Yes. And you hurt me just now—calling me a perverted taste."
"Don't interrupt. That new girl, now —Unity Hill! She's the plain homely sort, that takes any attention in dead earnest. Don't turn her holiday into a tragedy."
North glanced at his programme, and then, rising, offered his arm to Mrs. Leroy.
"I've got this with Amy. Don't rag any more, dear Mrs. Jack! You women are fed up with sentiment. Girls like being noticed. It's what they're out for. And next time you're hunting in England, please remember from me, that the poor fox doesn't like being killed. It hurts."
Mrs. Jack snapped her lips together angrily.
As they entered the ball-room, Amy Duveen—the island belle—floated by in the arms of an individual who gave (he impression of having been dried in red sand, after a Turkish bath.
North chuckled at the sight.
"She's cut my dance for Steel. Welcome, too! Where's your heart-to-heart-talk-with-girls, now, madam? And look there! Own I'm justified, and I'll take you off for a drink. I've earned one."
He nodded in the direction of Unity Hill, who was comparing programmes with those of two men.
Mrs. Leroy said nothing. For she had noticed that the prettiest woman in the room, and the plainest, had both looked at North. And she had seen that their eyes were the same.
IN spite of the soporific character of the Islands, events move swiftly there. In less than a week a fact was established: the new girl—Unity Hill—had become the rage.
North's monopoly spurred the other men to efforts to also annex her as their partner at dance and picnic.
Unity Hill accepted their homage with the stolid calm with which she had stood their former neglect. Under her quiet manner there was a subconscious air of self-satisfied superiority, akin to the despotism displayed by the rector's wife of a small parish, or a maiden queen. She lamed half the menkind on the Island at dances, and calmly accepted their apologies. She led off her aces at bridge, as an object-lesson to her partner, to keep the lead at "no trumps." Yet neither luck nor cards failed her, and both programme and purse remained full.
The women viewed her career with a blend of envy and contempt. Unity Hill might be a new toy. but they regarded her as a sixpenny-halfpenny article at best. They understood the mainspring that regulated the sway of fashion in her direction.
Amy Duveen mentioned the subject one afternoon, during a bathing-picnic, as she lay floating on the warm green water of the lagoon. A French-looking bathing-cap was knotted round her head; her pale-blue costume had been destined for Ostend.
She gave a flick of her sandalled foot in the direction of Unity Hill, whose head, crowned with a mackintosh cap, was bobbing up and down like an animated sponge-bag.
"That poor thing! Is it fair? Shouldn't some one give her a hint?"
The woman to whom she had spoken raised a pretty, dripping face.
"À quoi bon? You'd get no thanks, my dear. She'd probably think you were jealous."
The Island belle laughed somewhat shrilly. Her voice had grown a trifle thin of late, in company with her face.
"She's equal to it. Luck for me isn't it, that I've Tony Steel on tap, to make me independent of Wyndham North? Hard lines on the other girls though!"
She raised her voice suddenly.
"Going to the Subscription Ball next week,Miss Hill?"
Unity Hill splashed through the water and stood on the snow-white beach, her home-made red dress, redolent of an English "Super-Mare," sharply outlined against the vivid cornflower-blue of the sky.
"I must. I have every dance booked, at I mustn't let the men down."
"How lucky to be in: such demand! Don't you think it's perfectly sweet of the women here not to hate you? You've put us all out. There are plenty of pretty faces on the Island, too. Don't you think so?"
Unity unloosened her hair from her cap. Amy Duveen was astonished at the quantity (hat she managed to screw up into tight coils.
"Yes," she said simply. "But, you see, I'm fresh."
A chorus of shrill laughter broke out from the bathers.
"How generous of you!" continued Amy Duveen. "But, you see, with our passée looks, we've accumulated a little experience. I wonder if you would take a little advice in the spirit in which it is given?"
"You see," continued Amy Duveen, §with our passée
looks, we've accumulated a little experience.
"Advice?"
"Yes. Don't let Wyndham North make you look too conspicuous. You'll find won't pay."
Unity Hill's serenity suddenly vanished.
"You're mistaken. He's not that sort at all. I understand men. And I know he's—he's jannock!"*
* North English term for pleasant, outspoken, honest, genuine, or generous. —R.G.
She heard the laughter that followed her retreat.
Amy Duveen turned to her companions, "What was that last word? A swear? O, what a fool!"
Her mouth grew hard as she uttered her last sentence. Apparently she was talking to herself.
Two days later, those who paid their guineas for tickets for the Subscription Ball got, in addition to the floor and the music two sensations, served piping-hot.
No sooner had. the fresh arrivals got well inside the ball-room, when puffs of news were whirled to them, with the tornado velocity of Island gossip: the Island belle was formally engaged to Tony Steel; and the Girl with the Stodgy Soul was leaving by the next boat.
Heads got closer together, and voices rose and fell in time to the feverish beat of a valse. Opinions and speculations of identical value wore exchanged for pure love of barter. Then, having torn the emotional crisis to shreds, the general verdict was summed up in purely physical terms: Amy Duveen had saved her face; and Unity Hill would find that her leg had been pulled.
Amy Duveen, with a new ring on her finger, and a new rose-coloured dress—on her back—formed the centre of a small court. It was her moment of triumph, as she accepted the regretful greetings of the men and the veiled envy of the women. By her side stood Steel—seamed and sandy.
Mrs. Jack watched her with critical eyes. She noticed each flush of gratification and bridle of importance. But, even as she gazed, a new expression swept over the girl's face, wiping off its surface crust of vanity. This worldly Eve, on entering into Paradise, had cast a backward glance to the days when the Serpent walked upright like a man.
Mrs. Jack followed the direction of her eyes, and saw that Unity Hill had entered the ball-room. The starched gathers of her muslin dress made her look more bunched-up than usual. Her hair was neatly plastered back under a blue ribbon. On her placid face was a new look of deep unruffled happiness.
Still obedient to the dictates of the new craze, partners quickly surrounded the Girl with the Stodgy Soul. Amy Duveen, watching with close attention, saw them sent empty away. The former wallflower was nursing her dances. Then her face shone with welcome as Wyndham North reached her side.
He passed close to Amy, on his way, but he disposed of the claims of the pretty girl with a smile and two words of congratulation.
She heard his greeting to her homely rival:
"You angel to have kept those dances! I couldn't help being late."
"But I promised. So of course I did. For our last talk together."
As they left the ball-room, amused and interested eyes followed their retreat. Amy's colour rose, and she turned to Mrs. Jack, whose profile looked ironed.
"It's perfectly shameful!" she cried. "Scandalous! He's made her the laughing-stock of the Island. Any one can see that she expects a proposal."
Mrs. Leroy stiffened. The words did not ring true. The elder woman had long since weighed the Island belle, and found her light.
"I really think you girls have only yourselves to blame for Mr. North's flirtations," she said. "Every one knows that nearly every woman in the Island has made a fool of herself over him; yet, directly he throws the handkerchief, each is lured on, by her own vanity, to imagine she has made a conquest of his affections."
Amy Duveen returned the hostile glance with interest.
"Oh yes, I suppose that applies to the average Island girl. But take me." She spoke with piqued pride. "Every one, I believe, credits me with having had plenty of experience, although I am still so young. So, although I'm the last person to lose my head"—she twirled her new ring ostentatiously—"even I have found Mr. North charming. And if I—oh, Mrs. Jack, think! A girl fresh from some dead-alive village, without looks, charm, or experience. How can she understand? It's not fair. Indeed, it's not fair!"
For one moment Amy Duveen's common womanhood burst free from her casing of artifice. Mrs. Jack, to her astonishment, gripped her hand.
"You're right," she said gruffly. "It's not fair. It's uneven. Not cricket. And it's deuced rough on the girl. But he's dealing with new material. I have one hope only—that she will succeed in making him thoroughly ashamed of himself, for once in his life!"
The ball wound on its way. Dance succeeded dance, and still the Island, with its instinctive passion for scandal, remained on tenterhooks of excitement. The programme was nearly half through before the curtains of an alcove were lifted, and North reappeared with Unity Hill.
Scores of curious eyes focussed them as they ran the gauntlet on their way to the door. North's features, although carefully composed, bore slight traces of the discomfiture which is the aftermath of a trying scene. Unity's head was hung so low that it was difficult to see her face, but the whole of her person expressed grief and depression.
The contrast between the placid-faced girl in starched white muslin who had entered the alcove and the crushed, limp creature that emerged, was electric, and the fickle sympathies of the Islanders were swiftly inflamed with a fierce glow of indignation at the situation, over which they had been gloating. A red-faced planter, who had daughters of his own, blinked fiercely after the retreating couple.
"Fellow deserves a thundering good licking. Like to give it him myself!"
Amy Duveen stared with the rest of the crowd. Her narrowed eyes took in every detail of Unity Hill's appearance—the creased dress, the undefined waist, the averted face. Wonder surged up within her. This was the woman who had plunged her into a smoking hell o jealousy—whose measured movements had placed her on the rack, and whose placid speech had spread poison through her brain. She had envied her beyond all limits of human endurance, merely because of her daily association with North. Now, in the space of an hour, her rival had deflated to a mere heap of crumpled muslin and jilted maidenhood. In that figure of humiliation, Amy Duveen—radiant in shimmering rose-satin, and sporting her engagement-ring —saw herself.
With an impetuous movement she left her astonished partner, and hurried to the ladies' cloak-room.
Standing before the glass, helplessly fumbling at her face with a puff, was Unity Hill. Her utter lack of reserve was a shock to the proprieties. Her swollen features were a hopeless mash of powder and tears. Her eyes had sunk into her head, under the ravages of her grief.
The green-robed native attendant tossed her flower-wreathed head, and flashed her eyes and teeth towards Amy, to express their mutual mirth at the comedy.
"Let me!"
The spoiled Island belle, who had never raised a finger on her own behalf, suddenly possessed herself of the puff.
"Thank you," was the dull response, " I've—I've been crying, you know, and it won't do to let people see. They'd talk."
Her simplicity was stupendous. Yet, as Amy Duveen dabbed gently away at the stricken face, with the sensation of one who strives to cover an elephant-spoor with a feather, no smile curved her lips. The mirror was flawed, but the reflection was hers.
Unity Hill rose slowly to her feet, and covered her head with a woollen cloud.
"Thank you. Good-bye."
There was a pause, and then Amy Duveen impulsively gripped the cold hands.
"Oh, I know I shouldn't say it; but I'm so sorry about it—so dreadfully sorry!"
Unity interrupted her with a sudden sob.
"Are you? Then why didn't you tell me—tell me what he really was? It wasn't fair. How was I to know?"
Amy Duveen shrank back before the sudden fire in the sunken eyes.
"But—I tried—"
Unity Hill gave a little gesture of impotence. .
"There, there — of course! You couldn't understand!"
Amy watched her departure—a tragic figure in (he comic guise of a granny-cloak and a woollen "fascinator."
Then she went swiftly back to the ball-room.
Steel met her on the threshold.
"Where's the splendid Mr. North?" she asked bitterly. "Bragging of his conquest?"
Steel shook his head.
"In the bar. Seems hipped a bit. Strikes me, Amy, he's not found this the usual walk-over. It's pie to lead on some silly girl, and then chuck her, while the girl sighs politely, and lets him down easy. I'll bet you the simpleton made a scene."
Amy Duveen gazed at the bricky-red-grained face before her, with a sudden clairvoyance. Before her eyes passed a sharply defined vision of Wyndham North—handsome, inconstant, alluring. With a fierce shudder of repulsion she took Steel's arm and pressed it affectionately.
"Dear old thing!"
With that gesture she definitely shelved the shackles of her bondage to North. For she had looked upon his handiwork, and it was not good to see.
UNITY HILL sailed for England next day, and the track of foam over the blue waters of the Pacific had barely faded before the spice of interest over her episode grew flat. Another scandal arose in its place. Unity Hill was merely a girl who had made a fool of herself over North, and got chucked. And North himself was presumably surf-riding the other side of the Island.
Mrs. Jack heard of the absence of the defaulting hero with a sternly compressed mouth. It was on her verandah that he first presented himself, on his return, a few weeks later.
It was on Mrs. Leroy's verandah that he
first presented himself several weeks later.
After her first glance at his face she choked down the words in her throat, and herself to minister to his comforts, There was the unwonted luxury of ice in the tea. and some of it seemed to have communicated itself to her voice when, at last, she spoke.
"Come to give an account of yourself, eh? Don Juan on his travels? Well, I'm waiting."
North slammed down his cup.
"Why? I fail to see the necessity."
"None at all. So you've been surfing? That accounts for your looking so fit and splendid."
She glanced at his haggard face, and the two lines that cut it from mouth to chin.
"For a married woman, you seem to be uncommonly interested in me."
Mrs. Jack took no notice of the insolence of the reply. She patted North's arm.
"Come, Wyn." she said. "I'm old enough to be your mother. What have you been doing to yourself?"
North raised his black-rimmed eyes.
"You're a good sort, Mrs. Jack. You've about guessed it. No surf-riding for me. Been in deeper waters than that. On the razzle hard. Trying to drown a Sorrow—a Sorrow that swims!"
"Unity Hill?"
Mrs. Jack's voice was low.
"Yes."
"You're in trouble about her?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Jack strove with her masculine dislike of interference in important issues.
"Well," she said at length, "if it cuts as deep as that, why not act the man? Do the straight thing! You've done enough mischief in your life. Make up for it now. Go after her, and ask her marry you. Perhaps, in that way, you may drown your sorrow, and find peace in the end."
North raised his haggard face. Then he laughed.
"My dear Mrs. Jack, I have asked her."
"You—you haven't!"
"You're right. No, I didn't ask her—I implored her, begged her, grovelled before her. But she would have nothing to do with me—for the very good reason that she is engaged to some curate at home, whom she loves with all the force of her white soul."
Mrs. Leroy stared in her astonishment.
"Well!" she gasped. "You—you really proposed to that girl? It's impossible. You don't mean Unity Hill—the Girl with the Stodgy Soul?"
"Ah! My name for her! I remember. Yes, I did."
He began to pace the verandah.
"I cannot tell you when it all began—when it was. But, instead of laughing at her simplicity, and her funny conceit, and the strangeness of it all, I found I was growing to want her. Couldn't understand it at first. Thought I'd a touch of the sun. I suppose she was an acquired taste, like marmalade. No, no, I can't rot about it. Mrs. Jack, she was homely. That's it. The most beautiful word in the English language. Deep down in all men there's a small boy. She found him in me. I grew to lean on her. She was Home—Home. Where she was, was peace. It did not matter if her dress was dowdy, or her hair all wrong. She was different from other girls....And I counted on her, for I knew that she was not the sort that would lead one on for nothing. She knew men—through and through."
North's voice failed.
"And so you asked her to marry you? Go on."
"Yes. We had a scene. I went for her. But it wasn't her fault. She had not really led me on. But some woman had told her that I was an unprincipled flirt! "
The anger in his voice underlined the irony of his words. Mrs. Leroy, staring out at the hot air quivering over the sea, seemed to see a shadowy company of faces—the very pick of the beautiful womanhood of the Island— who had staked their emotional capital in the South Sea Bubble of North's affections, and lost. All avenged!—avenged in the person of the despised homely girl, from whose placid face regret was fast fading, as she steamed daily nearer to the love that awaited her in the North!
North picked up the thread of his tale.
"So she thought I was merely having a laugh at her expense. When she found out I was serious, she—she cut up. Bless her! Oh, bless her!"
He stopped and held out his hand.
"It's no good boring you any longer. Thanks awfully, but it's no good. You cannot help. You don't know—how it hurts. It hurts—damnably!"
Mrs. Jack was left alone. Before her heaved the wide stretch of violet Pacific. As she looked over the shining surface the muscles of her grim mouth suddenly slacked, and two tears shot swiftly down her tanned face.
"I found that little boy first," she said brokenly. "Found him, and loved him—for his faults. Yes, Wyn—it hurts."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.