Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate — Background and Themes

“_I_ don’t think so,” promptly disagreed Danny Seabrooke. “Macy is a weakling; a mere muscleless infant compared to me.”

“Oh, see here, Danny Seabrooke, you’ll have to eat that. Think I’ll stand for any such talk? Eat it now, or else prove it,” challenged Hal.

“I can prove it,” Danny waved confidently. “Just watch me lift Geraldine from the shifting sands.”

“Yes, just watch him,” drawled Lawrence Armitage. He took up a guitar, temporarily idle on the sands, and began to strum it lightly. His deep blue eyes rested mirthfully on Danny and Jerry.

“Wait a second,” Danny elaborately braced his feet in the sand. “Now, ready! Heave, heave, ho!”

Jerry suddenly let go of his hands and dropped back on the beach. “No, thank you.” She pretended displeasure. “I don’t care for your wonderful assistance.” She directed a scornful glance at her would-be helper.

“You did that on purpose,” accused Danny. “You are a cruel, cruel girl. Suppose I had lost my balance and dug my nose into the sand?”

“Sorry you didn’t,” was the unfeeling reply.

“Squabbling again,” Laurie reached out a helping hand to Jerry and drew her to her feet. Danny looked sadly on.

“Please forgive me and continue to regard me as your friend. That’s all I ask of you,” he pleaded with stony Jerry.

“You talk like a popular song,” she criticized. She broke into smiles when he knelt on the sand before her and contritely offered her his hand.

“Was that a compliment?” Danny grinned hopefully.

“Why should I throw bouquets at you? Can you think of a reason?” Jerry asked him. “I can’t think of one.”

“Neither can I,” Danny agreed, and the squabblers burst into laughter.

“Isn’t the moon wonderful tonight?” Standing beside Hal on the wide strip of gleaming beach Marjorie worshipped the white night. “Leila recites an old Irish poem about moonlight that must have been written for this night. It goes like this:

“The magic of yon sailing moon Lures my poor heartstrings out of me; God’s moonshine whitens the lagoon; The earth’s a silver mystery.”

Hal listened. His mind was centered on Marjorie rather than on the quaint bit of verse she was reciting. In her white lingerie frock, her vividly beautiful face raised toward the pale glory of the drifting moon, her loveliness filled Hal’s boyish heart with worship.

He would have liked to tell her that he thought her far more wonderful than either the silvery moon or the most exquisite bit of Irish verse that had ever been composed. Long friendship with Marjorie warned him against such an avowal. She was so different from most girls about compliments. She did not like to be told that she had done well, while she positively loathed being told she was beautiful. She had a clever way of politely ignoring a compliment, then immediately changing a subject from personal to impersonal which Hal considered maddening.

Since the first week in July when the Deans had arrived at Severn Beach, there to spend a part of the summer, Hal had been trying to decide whether or not he should allow another summer to pass without telling Marjorie of his love for her. On that memorable autumn evening of last year when Constance and Laurie had announced their early approaching marriage Hal had been dejectedly certain that Marjorie had nothing to give him save friendship. He had resolved then never to ask her to marry him unless he should come to believe that she had experienced a change of heart toward him.

Lately, since Marjorie had come to stay at Severn Beach, where the Macys usually spent the summers, Hal had been sorely tempted to break his proud resolution. Constance and Laurie had returned from their winter in Europe and were visiting Hal and Jerry at Cliff House, the apartment hotel in which the Macy family lived. Their perfect happiness made Hal wonder wistfully why it was that Marjorie could not love him even half so fondly as Constance loved Laurie. He had been Marjorie’s faithful cavalier for the same number of years that Laurie had been Constance’s. Now Laurie had won Connie for his wife, while he and Marjorie were still, as she had often said, “just good friends.”

This disheartening thought now flashed through his brain for perhaps the hundredth time that week. The calm friendly glance he forced himself to bend on Marjorie as she finished quoting the verse bore no sign of his disquieting reflections.

“Bully for the Irish!” he exclaimed with deceiving heartiness.

“You’re not a bit under the magic spell of the white moonshine,” she rebuked with a laughing, upward glance at Hal.