"Very well," said the professor.

The worm had turned!

CHAPTER XIV

Mornings are beautiful all over the earth but Nature keeps a special kind of morning for early summer use at Friendly Bay. In sudden clearness, in chill sweetness, in almost awful purity there is no other morning like it. It wrings the human soul quite clear of everything save wonder at its loveliness.

Desire never bathed until the sun was up, not because she feared the dawn-cold water but because she would not stir the unbroken beauty of its opal tide. With the first rays of the sun, the spell would break, the waves would dance again, the gulls would soar and dip, the crabs would scuttle across the shining sand, the round wet head of a friendly seal would pop up here and there to say good-morning. Then, Desire would swim--far out--so far that Spence, watching her, would feel his heart contract. He could not follow her--yet. But he never begged her not to take the risk, if risk there were. Why should she lose one happy thrill in her own joyous strength because he feared? Better that she should never come back from these long, glorious swims than that he should have held her from them by so much as a gesture.

And she always did come back, glowing, dripping, laughing, her head as sleek as a young seal's, salt upon her lips and on her wave-whipped cheek. Spence, whose swims were shorter and more sedate, would usually have breakfast ready.

But upon this particular morning Desire loitered. Though the smell of bacon was in the air, she sat pensively in the shallows of an outgoing tide and flung sh.e.l.ls at the crabs. She would have told you that she was thinking. But had she used the word "feeling" she would have been nearer the truth. And the thing which she obscurely felt was that something had mysteriously altered for the worse in a world which, of late, had shown remarkable promise. It was a small thing. She hardly knew what it was. Merely a sense of dissonance somewhere.

Whatever it was, it had not been there yesterday. Yesterday morning she had felt no desire to sit in the shallows and throw sh.e.l.ls at crabs.

Yesterday morning her mind had been full of that happy inconsequence which feels no need of thought. Today was different. Mentally she shook herself with some irritation. "What is the matter with you?" she asked.

But the self she addressed seemed oddly reluctant. "Come now," said Desire, hitting an especially big crab, "out with it! There's no use pretending that you don't know." Thus adjured, the self offered one single and sulky word. The word was "Mary." "Oh, nonsense!" said Desire hastily.

But there it was. She had forced the answer and had to make the best of it. Her memory trailed back. Once started, it had small difficulty in tracking her dissatisfaction to its real beginning. Everything, it reminded her, had been perfect until she and Benis had sat upon the hill in the sunset and talked about Mary. Something had happened then.

Like a certain ancestress she had coveted the fruit of knowledge and knowledge had been given her. Not at once--Benis had at first been distinctly reluctant--but by gentle persistence she had won through his cool reserve. Abruptly and without visible reason, his att.i.tude had changed. He had said in that drawling voice of his, "You wish me to talk about Mary?" And then, suddenly, he had talked.

He had told her several things. The color of Mary's hair, for instance.

Her hair was yellow. Benis had been insistent in pointing out that when he said "yellow" he did not mean goldish or bronze, or fawn-colored or tow-colored or t.i.tian, but just yellow. "Do you see that patch of sky over there where the mountain dips?" he had said. "Mary's hair was yellow, like that."

That patch of sky, as Desire remembered it, was very beautiful. Quite too beautiful to be compared to any-one's hair. No doubt it was only in Benis's imagination that Mary's hair was anything like it.

But nevertheless it was there that the world had gone wrong. It was while Benis had sat gazing into that patch of amber sky that Desire, gazing too, had, for the first time, realized the Other. Up until then, Mary had been an abstraction--thenceforth she was a personality. That made all the difference. Desire, throwing sh.e.l.ls at crabs, admitted that, for her, there had been no Mary until she had heard that her hair was yellow.

It was ridiculous but it was true. Mary without hair had been a gentle and retiring shade. A phantom in whom it had been possible to take an academic interest. But no shade has a right to hair like an amber sunset. Desire threw a sh.e.l.l viciously. Very little more, she felt, and she would positively dislike Mary!

She jumped up and stamped in the shallow water. The crabs, big and little, scuttled away.

"Hurr-ee!" called the professor waving a frying-pan.

"Com-ing!" Desire's voice rose gaily. For the present, her small dissatisfaction vanished with the crabs.

"This coffee has been made ten minutes," grumbled the getter-of-breakfast with a properly martyred air. "Whatever were you doing?"

"Thinking."

"It isn't done. Not before breakfast."

"I was thinking," fibbed Desire, "that I have never been so spoiled in my life and that it can't go on. My domestic conscience is beginning to murmur. As soon as we are at home, you will be expected to stay in bed until you smell the coffee coming up the stairs."

"Aunt Caroline," said the professor, "does not believe in coffee for breakfast, except on Sunday."

"I do."

"Eh? Oh--I see. Well, I'll put my money on you. Only I hope you aren't really set on making it yourself. Because the cook would leave.'"

"Good gracious! Do we have a cook?"

"We do. At least, we did. Also a maid. But maids, I understand, are greatly diminished. There appear to have been tragedies in Bainbridge.

Have you eaten sufficient bacon to listen calmly to an extract from Aunt Caroline's last? Sit tight, then--

"'As to what the world is coming to in the matter of domestic service,'" writes Aunt Caroline, "I do not know. I do not wish to worry you, Benis, but as you will be marrying some day, in spite of that silly doctor of yours who insists that it's not to be thought of, you may as well be conversant with the situation. To put it briefly--I have been without competent help for two weeks. You know, dear boy, that I am easily satisfied. I expect very little from anyone. But I think that I am ent.i.tled to prompt and willing service. That, at the very least!

Yet I must tell you that Mabel, my cook, has left me most ungratefully after only three months' notice! She is to be married to Bob Summers, the plumber. (Lieutenant Robert Summers, since the war, if you please!) Well, she can never say I did not warn her. I did not mince matters. I told her exactly what married life is, and why I have never tried it.

But the foolish girl is beyond advice. I have had two cooks since Mabel, but one insisted upon whistling in the kitchen and the other served omelette made with one egg. My wants are trifling, as you know, but one cannot abrogate all personal dignity--'

"Do you get the subtle connection between the one egg and Aunt Caroline's personal dignity?" asked Spence with anxiety. "Because if you don't, I'll never be able to ask you to live in Bainbridge. I may as well confess now that it was only my serene confidence in your sense of humor which permitted me to marry you at all. I should never have dared to offer Aunt Caroline as an 'in-law' to anyone who couldn't see a joke."

"You are very fond of her all the same," said Desire shrewdly. "And though she expects very little from anyone, she evidently adores you.

She can't be all funny. There must be an Aunt Caroline, deep down, that is not funny at all. I think I'm rather afraid of her. Only you have so often said that she wished you to get married--"

"Excuse me, my dear. What I said was, 'Aunt Caroline wished to get me married.' The position of the infinitive is the important thing. Aunt Caroline never intended me to do it all by myself."

"Oh. Then, in that case, she may resent your having done it."

"Resent," cheerfully, "is a feeble word. It doesn't express Aunt Caroline at all."

"You take it calmly."

"Well, you see I've got you to fight for me now."

They looked at each other over the empty coffee cups and laughed.

It is easy to laugh on a fine morning. But if they had known where Aunt Caroline was at that moment--how-ever, they didn't.

"Once," said Spence "my Aunt read a book upon Eugenics. I don't know how it happened. It was one of those inexplicable events for which no one can account. It made a deep impression. She has studied me ever since with a view to scientific matrimony. Alas, my poor relative!"

"I once read a book upon Eugenics, too," said Desire with a reminiscent smile. "It seemed sensible. Of course I was not personally interested and that always makes a difference. One thing occurred to me, though--it didn't seem to give Nature credit for much judgment."

Benis chuckled. "No, it wouldn't. Terrible old blunderer, Nature!

Always working for the average. Never seems to have heard the word 'specialize.' We've got her there."

"Then you think--"

"Oh no," hastily, "I don't. I observe results with interest, that is all."

Desire began to collect the breakfast dishes. "That was where the book seemed weak," she said thoughtfully. "It hadn't much to say about results. It dealt mostly with consequences. They," she added after a pause, "were rather frightening."

The professor glanced at her sharply. Had she been worrying over this?

Had she connected it with that dreadful old man whom she called father?

But her face was quite untroubled as she went on.

"I think they've missed something, though," she said. "There must be something more than the things they tabulate. Some subtle force of life which isn't physical at all. Something that uses physical things as tools. If its tools are fine, it will do finer work, but if its tools are blunt it will work with them anyway. And it gets things done."