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CONTACT AND OTHER STORIES

by

FRANCES NOYES HART


[Illustration]






Garden City      New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923

Copyright, 1923, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian

Copyright, 1920, 1921, 1923, by the Pictorial Review Company

Copyright, 1921, by Charles Scribner’S Sons

Copyright, 1922, by the Curtis Publishing Company in the United
States and Great Britain

Copyright, 1923, by the McCall Company

Printed in the United States
at
the Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.

First Edition




  TO MY FATHER
  FRANK BRETT NOYES




CONTENTS


                              PAGE
  “CONTACT!”                     1

  THERE WAS A LADY              35

  LONG DISTANCE                 76

  PHILIP THE GAY               108

  GREEN GARDENS                157

  DELILAH                      177

  HER GRACE                    230

  THE HONOURABLE TONY          264




CONTACT AND OTHER STORIES




“CONTACT!”


The first time she heard it was in the silk-hung and flower-scented
peace of the little drawing room in Curzon Street. His
sister Rosemary had wanted to come up to London to get some
clothes--Victory clothes they called them in those first joyous
months after the armistice, and decked their bodies in scarlet
and silver, even when their poor hearts went in black--and Janet
had been urged to leave her own drab boarding-house room to stay
with the forlorn small butterfly. They had struggled through
dinner somehow, and Janet had finished her coffee and turned the
great chair so that she could watch the dancing fire (it was cool
for May), her cloudy brown head tilted back against the rose-red
cushion, shadowy eyes half closed, idle hands linked across her
knees. She looked every one of her thirty years--and mortally
tired--and careless of both facts. But she managed an encouraging
smile at the sound of Rosemary’s shy, friendly voice at her elbow.

“Janet, these are yours, aren’t they? Mummy found them with some
things last week, and I thought that you might like to have them.”

She drew a quick breath at the sight of the shabby packet.

“Why, yes,” she said evenly. “That’s good of you, Rosemary. Thanks
a lot.”

“That’s all right,” murmured Rosemary diffidently. “Wouldn’t you
like something to read? There’s a most frightfully exciting Western
novel----”

The smile took on a slightly ironical edge.

“Don’t bother about me, my dear. You see, I come from that
frightfully exciting West, and I know all about the pet
rattlesnakes and the wildly Bohemian cowboys. Run along and play
with your book; I’ll be off to bed in a few minutes.”

Rosemary retired obediently to the deep chair in the corner, and
with the smile gone but the irony still hovering, she slipped the
cord off the packet. A meagre and sorry enough array; words had
never been for her the swift, docile servitors that most people
found them. But the thin gray sheet in her fingers started out
gallantly enough--“Beloved.” Beloved! She leaned far forward,
dropping it with deft precision into the glowing pocket of
embers. What next? This was more like; it began: “Dear Captain
Langdon” in the small, contained writing that was her pride, and
it went on soberly enough, “I shall be glad to have tea with you
next Friday--not Thursday, because I must be at the hut then. It
was stupid of me to have forgotten you; next time I will try to
do better.” Well, she had done better the next time. She had not
forgotten him again--never, never again. That had been her first
letter; how absurd of Jerry, the magnificently careless, to have
treasured it all that time, the miserable, stilted little thing!
She touched it with curious fingers. Surely, surely he must have
cared, to have cared so much for that!

It seemed incredible that she hadn’t remembered him at once when
he came into the hut that second time. Of course she had only seen
him for a moment and six months had passed, but he was so absurdly
vivid, every inch of him, from the top of his shining, dark head
to the heels of his shining, dark boots--and there were a great
many inches! How could she have forgotten, even for a minute, those
eyes dancing like blue fire in the brown young face, the swift,
disarming charm of his smile, and, above all, his voice--how, in
the name of absurdity, could any one who had once heard it ever
forget Jeremy Langdon’s voice? Even now she had only to close her
eyes, and it rang out again, with its clipped British accent and
its caressing magic, as un-English as any Provençal troubadour’s!
And yet she had forgotten; he had had to speak twice before she had
even lifted her head.

“Miss America--oh, I say, she’s forgotten me, and I thought that
I’d made such an everlasting impression!” The delighted amazement
reached even her tired ears, and she had smiled wanly as she pushed
the pile of coppers nearer to him.

“Have you been in before? It’s stupid of me, but there are such
hundreds of thousands of you, and you are gone in a minute, you
see. That’s your change, I think.”

“Hundreds of thousands of me, hey?” He had leaned across the
counter, his face alight with mirth. “I wish to the Lord my angel
mother could hear you--it’s what I’m for ever tellin’ her, though
just between us, it’s stuff and nonsense. I’ve got a well-founded
suspicion that I’m absolutely unique. You wait and see!”

And she had waited--and she had seen! She stirred a little, dropped
the note into the flames, and turned to the next, the quiet,
mocking mouth suddenly tortured and rebellious.

“No, you must be mad,” it ran, the trim writing strangely shaken.
“How often have you seen me--five times? Do you know how old I
am? How hard and tired and useless? No--no, a thousand times. In a
little while we will wake up and find that we were dreaming.”

That had brought him to her swifter than Fate, triumphant mischief
in every line of his exultant face. “Just let those damn cups
slip from your palsied fingers, will you? I’m goin’ to take your
honourable age for a little country air--it may keep you out of the
grave for a few days longer. Never can tell! No use your scowlin’
like that. The car’s outside, and the big chief says to be off with
you. Says you have no more colour than a banshee, and not half
the life--can’t grasp the fact that it’s just chronic antiquity.
Fasten the collar about your throat--no, higher! Darlin’, darlin’,
think of havin’ a whole rippin’ day to ourselves. You’re glad, too,
aren’t you, my little stubborn saint?”

Oh, that joyous and heart-breaking voice, running on and on--it
made all the other voices that she had ever heard seem colourless
and unreal----

“Darlin’ idiot, what do I care how old you are? Thirty, hey? Almost
old enough to be an ancestor! Look at me--no, look at me. Dare you
to say that you aren’t mad about me!”

Mad about him; mad, mad. She lifted her hands to her ears, but she
could no more shut out the exultant voice now than she could on
that windy afternoon.

“Other fellow got tired of you, did he? Good luck for us, what?
You’re a fearfully tiresome person, darlin’. It’s goin’ to take
me nine tenths of eternity to tell you how tiresome you are. Give
a chap a chance, won’t you? The tiresomest thing about you is the
way you leash up that dimple of yours. No, by George, there it is!
Janie, look at me----”

She touched the place where the leashed dimple had hidden with a
delicate and wondering finger--of all Jerry’s gifts to her, the
most miraculous had been that small fugitive. Exiled now, for ever
and for ever.

“Are you comin’ down to White Orchards next week-end? I’m off
for France on the twelfth and you’ve simply got to meet my
people. You’ll be insane about ’em; Rosemary’s the most beguilin’
flibbertigibbet, and I can’t wait to see you bein’ a kind of an
elderly grandmother to her. What a bewitchin’ little grandmother
you’re goin’ to be one of these days----”

Oh, Jerry! Oh, Jerry, Jerry! She twisted in her chair, her face
suddenly a small mask of incredulous terror. No, no, it wasn’t
true, it wasn’t true--never--never--never! And then, for the first
time, she heard it. Far off but clear, a fine and vibrant humming,
the distant music of wings! The faint, steady pulsing was drawing
nearer and nearer--nearer still; it must be flying quite high. The
letters scattered about her as she sprang to the open window; no,
it was too high to see, and too dark, though the sky was powdered
with stars, but she could hear it clearly, hovering and throbbing
like some gigantic bird. It must be almost directly over her head,
if she could only see it.

“It sounds--it sounds the way a humming-bird would look through a
telescope,” she said half aloud, and Rosemary murmured sleepily but
courteously, “What, Janet?”

“Just an airplane; no, gone now. It sounded like a bird. Didn’t you
hear it?”

“No,” replied Rosemary drowsily. “We get so used to the old things
that we don’t even notice them any more. Queer time to be flying.”

“It sounded rather beautiful,” said Janet, her face still turned
to the stars. “Far off, but so clear and sure. I wonder--I wonder
whether it will be coming back?”

Well, it came back. She went down to White Orchards with Rosemary
for the following week-end, and after she had smoothed her hair
and given a scornful glance at the pale face in the mirror, with
its shadowy eyes and defiant mouth, she slipped out to the lower
terrace for a breath of the soft country air. Half way down the
flight of steps she stumbled and caught at the balustrade, and
stood shaking for a moment, her face pressed against its rough
surface. Once before she had stumbled on those steps, but it was
not the balustrade that had saved her. She could feel his arms
about her now, holding her up, holding her close and safe. The
magical voice was in her ears.

“Let you go? I’ll never let you go! Poor little feet, stumblin’
in the dark, what would you do without Jerry? Time’s comin’, you
cheeky little devils, when you’ll come runnin’ to him when he
whistles! No use tryin’ to get away--you belong to him.”

Oh, whistle to them now, Jerry--they would run to you across the
stars!

“How’d you like to marry me before I go back to-morrow? No? No
accountin’ for tastes, Miss Abbott--lots of people would simply
jump at it! All right, April, then. Birds and flowers and all that
kind o’ thing--pretty intoxicatin’, what? No, keep still, darlin’
goose. What feller taught you to wear a dress that looks like roses
and smells like roses and feels like roses? This feller? Lord help
us, what a lovely liar!”

And suddenly she found herself weeping helplessly, desperately,
like an exhausted child, shaken to the heart at the memory of the
rose-coloured dress.

“You like me just a bit, don’t you, funny, quiet little thing?
But you’d never lift a finger to hold me; that’s the wonder of
you--that’s why I’ll never leave you. No, not for heaven. You can’t
lose me--no use tryin’.”

But she had lost you, Jerry; you had left her, for all your
promises, to terrified weeping in the hushed loveliness of the
terrace, where your voice had turned her still heart to a dancing
star, where your fingers had touched her quiet blood to flowers
and flames and butterflies. She had believed you then. What would
she ever believe again? And then she caught back the despairing
sobs swiftly, for once more she heard, far off, the rushing of
wings. Nearer--nearer--humming and singing and hovering in the
quiet dusk. Why, it was over the garden! She flung back her head,
suddenly eager to see it; it was a friendly and thrilling sound in
all that stillness. Oh, it was coming lower--lower still--she could
hear the throb of the propellers clearly. Where _was_ it? Behind
those trees, perhaps? She raced up the flight of steps, dashing
the treacherous tears from her eyes, straining up on impatient
tiptoes. Surely she could see it now! But already it was growing
fainter--drifting steadily away, the distant hum growing lighter
and lighter--lighter still----

“Janet!” called Mrs. Langdon’s pretty, patient voice.
“Dinner-time, dear! Is there any one with you?”

“No one at all, Mrs. Langdon. I was just listening to an airplane.”

“An _airplane_? Oh, no, dear; they never pass this way any more.
The last one was in October, I think----”

The plaintive voice trailed off in the direction of the dining room
and Janet followed it, a small, secure smile touching her lips. The
last one had not passed in October. It had passed a few minutes
before, over the lower garden.

She quite forgot it by the next week; she was becoming an adept at
forgetting. That was all that was left for her to do! Day after
day and night after night she had raised the drawbridge between
her heart and memory, leaving the lonely thoughts to shiver
desolately on the other side of the moat. She was weary to the
bone of suffering, and they were enemies, for all their dear and
friendly guise; they would tear her to pieces if she ever let them
in. No, no, she was done with them. She would forget, as Jerry
had forgotten. She would destroy every link between herself and
the past, and pack the neat little steamer trunk neatly and bid
these kind and gentle people good-bye, and take herself and her
bitterness and her dulness back to the classroom in the Western
university town--back to the Romance languages. The Romance
languages!

She would finish it all that night, and leave as soon as possible.
There were some trinkets to destroy, and his letters from France
to burn; she would give Rosemary the rose-coloured dress--foolish,
lovely little Rosemary, whom he had loved, and who was lying now
fast asleep in the next room, curled up like a kitten in the middle
of the great bed, her honey-coloured hair falling about her in a
shining mist. She swept back her own cloud of hair resolutely,
frowning at the candle-lit reflection in the mirror. Two desolate
pools in the small, pale oval of her face stared back at her--two
pools with something drowned in their lonely depths. Well, she
would drown it deeper!

The letters first; lucky that they still used candlelight! It would
make the task much simpler--the funeral pyre already lighted. She
moved one of the tall candelabra to the desk, sitting for a long
time quite still, her chin cupped in her hands, staring down at the
bits of paper. She could smell the wall-flowers under the window as
though they were in the room; drenched in dew and moonlight, they
were reckless of their fragrance. All this peace and cleanliness
and ordered beauty--what a ghastly trick for God to have played--to
have taught her to adore them, and then to snatch them away! All
about her, warm with candlelight, lay the gracious loveliness of
the little room with its dark waxed furniture, its bright glazed
chintz, its narrow bed with the cool linen sheets smelling of
lavender, and its straight, patterned curtains--oh, that hateful,
mustard-coloured den at home with its golden-oak day-bed!

She wrung her hands suddenly in a little hunted gesture. How could
he have left her to that, he who had sworn that he would never
leave her? In every one of those letters beneath her linked fingers
he had sworn it--in every one perjured--false half a hundred times.
Pick up any one of them at random----

“Janie, you darling stick, is ‘dear Jerry’ the best that you can
do? You ought to learn French! I took a perfectly ripping French
kid out to dinner last night--name’s Liane, from the Varietiés--and
she was calling me ‘_mon grand chéri_’ before the salad, and ‘_mon
p’tit amour_’ before the green mint. Maybe _that’ll_ buck you up!
And I’d have you know that she’s so pretty that it’s ridiculous,
with black velvet hair that she wears like a little Oriental
turban, and eyes like golden pansies, and a mouth between a kiss
and a prayer, and a nice affable nature into the bargain. But I’m
a ghastly jackass--I didn’t get any fun out of it at all--because
I really didn’t even see her. Under the pink shaded candles to my
blind eyes it seemed that there was seated the coolest, quietest,
whitest little thing, with eyes that were as indifferent as my
velvety Liane’s were kind, and mockery in her smile. Oh, little
masquerader! If I could get my arms about you even for a minute--if
I could kiss so much as the tips of your lashes--would you be cool
and quiet and mocking then? Janie, Janie, rosy-red as flowers on
the terrace and sweeter--sweeter--they’re about you now--they’ll be
about you always!”

Burn it fast, candle--faster, faster. Here’s another for you!

“So the other fellow cured you of using pretty names, did he--you
don’t care much for dear and darling any more? Bit hard on me, but
fortunately for you, Janie Janet, I’m rather a dab at languages,
’specially when it comes to ‘cozy names.’ _Querida mi alma_,
_douchka_, _Herzliebchen_, _carissima_, and _bien, bien-aimée_,
I’ll not run out of salutations for you this side of heaven--no,
nor t’other. I adore the serene grace with which you ignore the
ravishing Liane. Haven’t you any curiosity at all, my Sphinx?
No? Well, then, just to punish you, I’ll tell you all about it.
She’s married to the best fellow in the world, a _liaison_ officer
working with our squadron--and she worships the ground that he
walks on and the air that he occasionally flies in. So whenever I
run up to the City of Light, _en permission_, I look her up, and
take her the latest news--and for an hour, over the candles, we
pretend that I am Maurice, and that she is Janie. Only she says
that I don’t pretend very well--and it’s just possible that she’s
right.

“_Mon petit cœur et grand trésor_, I wish that I could take you
flying with me this evening. You’d be daft about it! Lots of it’s
a rotten bore, of course, but there’s something in me that doesn’t
live at all when I’m on this too, too solid earth. Something that
lies there, crouched and dormant, waiting until I’ve climbed up
into the seat, and buckled the strap about me and laid my hands on
the ‘stick.’ It’s waiting--waiting for a word--and so am I. And I
lean far forward, watching the figure toiling out beyond till the
call comes back to me, clear and confident: ‘Contact, sir?’ And
I shout back, as restless and exultant as the first time that I
answered it: ‘Contact!’

“And I’m off--and I’m alive--and I’m free! Ho, Janie! That’s
simpler than Abracadabra or Open Sesame, isn’t it? But it opens
doors more magical than ever they swung wide, and something in me
bounds through, more swift and eager than any Aladdin. Free! I’m
a crazy sort of a beggar, my little love--that same thing in me
hungers and thirsts and aches for freedom. I go half mad when
people or events try to hold me; you, wise beyond wisdom, never
will. Somehow, between us, we’ve struck the spark that turns a
mere piece of machinery into a wonder with wings; somehow, you are
for ever setting me free. It is your voice, your voice of silver
and peace, that’s eternally whispering ‘Contact!’ to me--and I am
released, heart, soul, and body! And because you speed me on my
way, Janie, I’ll never fly so far, I’ll never fly so long, I’ll
never fly so high that I’ll not return to you. You hold me fast,
for ever and for ever.”

You had flown high and far indeed, Jerry--and you had not returned.
For ever and for ever! Burn faster, flame!

“My blessed child, who’s been frightening you? Airplanes are by all
odds safer than taxis, and no end safer than the infernal duffer
who’s been chaffing you would be if I could once get my hands on
him. Damn fool! Don’t care if you do hate swearing; damn fools are
damn fools, and there’s an end to it. All those statistics are
sheer melodramatic rot; the chap who fired ’em at you probably
has all his money invested in submarines, and is fairly delirious
with jealousy. Peg (did I ever formally introduce you to Pegasus,
the best pursuit-plane in the R. F. C.--or out of it?) Peg’s about
as likely to let me down as you are! We’d do a good deal for each
other, she and I; nobody else can really fly her, the darling! But
she’d go to the stars for me--and farther still. Never you fear--we
have charmed lives, Peg and I--we belong to Janie.

“I think that people make an idiotic row about dying, anyway. It’s
probably jolly good fun, and I can’t see what difference a few
years here would make if you’re going to have all eternity to play
with. Of course you’re a ghastly little heathen, and I can see you
wagging a mournful head over this already--but every time that I
remember what a shocking sell the After Life (exquisite phrase!) is
going to be for you, darling, I do a bit of head-wagging myself,
and it’s not precisely mournful! I can’t wait to see your blank
consternation, and you needn’t expect any sympathy from _me_. My
very first words will be, ‘I told you so!’ Maybe I’ll rap them out
to you with a table-leg!

“What do you think of all this Ouija Planchette rumpus, anyway? I
can’t for the life of me see why any one with a whole new world to
explore should hang around chattering with this one. I know that
I’d be half mad with excitement to get at the new job, and that
I’d find reassuring the loved ones (exquisite phrase number two)
a hideous bore. Still, I can see that it would be nice from their
selfish point of view! Well, I’m no ghost yet, thank God, nor yet
are you--but if ever I am one, I’ll show you what devotion really
is. I’ll come all the way back from heaven to play with foolish
Janie, who doesn’t believe that there is one to come from. To
foolish, foolish Janie, who will still be dearer than the prettiest
angel of them all, no matter how alluringly her halo may be tilted
or her wings ruffled. To Janie who, Heaven forgive him, will be all
that one poor ghost has ever loved!”

Had there come to him, the radiant and the confident, a moment
of terrible and shattering surprise--a moment when he realized
that there were no pretty angels with shining wings waiting to
greet him--a moment when he saw before him only the overwhelming
darkness, blacker and deeper than the night would be, when she blew
out the little hungry flame that was eating up the sheet that held
his laughter? Oh, gladly would she have died a thousand deaths to
have spared him that moment!

“My little Greatheart, did you think that I did not know how brave
you are? You are the truest soldier of us all, and I, who am not
much given to worship, am on my knees before that shy gallantry
of yours, which makes what courage we poor duffers have seem a
vain and boastful thing. When I see you as I saw you last, small
and white and clear and brave, I can’t think of anything but the
first crocuses at White Orchards, shining out, demure and valiant,
fearless of wind and storm and cold--fearless of Fear itself. You
see, you’re so very, very brave that you make me ashamed to be
afraid of poetry and sentiment and pretty words--things of which
I have a good, thumping Anglo-Saxon terror, I can tell you! It’s
because I know what a heavenly brick you are that I could have
killed that statistical jackass for bothering you; but I’ll forgive
him, since you say that it’s all right. And so ghosts are the only
thing in the world that frighten you--even though you know that
there aren’t any. You and Madame de Staël, hey? ‘I do not believe
in ghosts, but I fear them!’ It’s pretty painful to learn that the
mere sight of one would turn you into a gibbering lunatic. Nice
sell for an enthusiastic spirit who’d romped clear back from heaven
to give you a pleasant surprise--I _don’t_ think! Well, no fear,
young Janie; I’ll find some way if I’m put to it--some nice, safe,
pretty way that wouldn’t scare a neurasthenic baby, let alone the
dauntless Miss Abbott. I’ll find----”

Oh, no more of that; no more! She crushed the sheet in her hands
fiercely, crumpling it into a little ball; the candle-flame was
too slow. No, she couldn’t stand it--she couldn’t, she couldn’t,
and there was an end to it. She would go raving mad--she would
kill herself--she would---- She lifted her head, wrenched suddenly
back from that chaos of despair, alert and intent. There it was
again, coming swiftly nearer and nearer from some immeasurable
distance--down--down--nearer still--the very room was humming and
throbbing with it, she could almost hear the singing in the wires.
She swung far out over the window edge, searching the moon-drenched
garden with eager eyes; surely, surely it would never fly so low
unless it were about to land! Engine trouble, perhaps, though
she could detect no break in the huge, rhythmic pulsing that was
shaking the night. Still----

“Rosemary!” she called urgently. “Rosemary, listen--is there a
place where it can land?”

“Where what can land?” asked a drowsy voice.

“An airplane. It’s flying so low that it must be in some kind of
trouble; do come and see!”

Rosemary came pattering obediently toward her, a small docile
figure, dark eyes misted with dreams, wide with amazement.

“I must be nine tenths asleep,” she murmured gently. “Because I
don’t hear a single thing, Janet. Perhaps----”

“Hush--listen!” begged Janet, raising an imperative hand--and then
her own eyes widened. “Why--it’s _gone_!” There was a note of
flat incredulity in her voice. “Heavens, how those things must eat
up space! Not a minute ago it was fairly shaking this room, and
now----”

Rosemary stifled a yawn and smiled ingratiatingly.

“Perhaps you were asleep, too,” she suggested humbly. “I don’t
believe that airplanes ever fly this way any more. Or it might have
been that fat Hodges boy on his motorcycle; he does make the most
dreadful racket. Oh, Janet, what a perfectly _ripping_ night--do
see!”

They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white
and shining beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a
place of magic. The corners of Janet’s mouth lifted suddenly. How
absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did
they all regard her as an amiable lunatic, even little, friendly
Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening.
But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and
indifferent--and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies
had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a
crying pity that it need ever land; anything so fleet and strong
and sure should fly for ever! But if they must rest, those beating
wings--the old R. F. C. toast went singing through her head and
she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling--“Happy landings!
Happy landings, you!”

The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to
be known for many moons as “the Big Storm.” It had been gathering
all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown incredible, even
to Janet’s American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper
sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would
burn for ever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break
the stillness--it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were
holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Everyone
had struggled through the day assuring one another that when
evening came it would be all right, dangling the alluring thought
of the cool darkness before each other’s hot and weary eyes; but
the night proved even more outrageous than the day. To the little
group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their
coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront. The darkness closed
in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its
weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

“Like--like black cotton wool,” explained Rosemary, stirred to
unwonted resentment. She had spent the day curled up in the
largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and
incredulity.

“I honestly think that we must be dreaming,” she murmured to her
feverish audience; “I do, honestly. Why, it’s only _May_, and we
never, never--there was that day in August about five years ago
that was almost as bad, though. D’you remember, Mummy?”

“It’s hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, dear.
Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk? I feel somehow
that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet.”

Janet stirred a little, uneasily. She hated silence, that terrible
empty space waiting to be filled up with your thoughts--why, the
idlest chatter spared you that. She hated the terrace, too--she
closed her eyes to shut out the ugly darkness that was pressing
against her; behind the shelter of her lids it was cooler and
stiller, but open eyed or closed, she could not shut out memory.
The very touch of the bricks beneath her feet brought back that
late October day. She had been sitting curled up on the steps in
the warm sunlight, with the keen, sweet air stirring her hair and
sending the beech-leaves dancing down the flagged path; there had
been a heavenly smell of burning from the far meadow, and she was
sniffing it luxuriously, feeling warm and joyous and protected in
Jerry’s great tweed coat, watching the tall figure swinging across
from the lodge gate with idle, happy eyes--not even curious. It was
not until he had almost reached the steps that she had noticed that
he was wearing a foreign uniform--and even then she had promptly
placed him as one of Rosemary’s innumerable conquests, bestowing on
him a friendly and inquiring smile.

“Were you looking for Miss Langdon?” Even now she could see the
courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her,
baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our
perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

“But no,” he had said gently, “I was looking for you, Miss Abbott.”

“Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was
Miss Abbott?”

And he had smiled with his lips, not his eyes.

“I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Maurice
Laurent, Miss Abbott.”

And “Oh,” she had cried joyously, “Liane’s Maurice!”

“But yes--Liane’s Maurice. They are not here, the others? Madame
Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?”

“No, they’ve gone to some parish fair, and I’ve been wicked and
stayed home. Won’t you sit down and talk to me? Please!”

“Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say
is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy’s Janie that I would
say it. May I, then?”

It had seemed to Jeremy’s Janie that the voice in which she
answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her
eyes from the grave and vivid face.

“Yes. And quickly, please.”

So he had told her, quickly, in his exquisitely careful English,
and she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the
brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the
details of the last drive instead of tearing her life to pieces
with every word. She remembered now that it hadn’t seemed real at
all; if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could
she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her
cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on
her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted,
and went raving mad!

“You say--that his back is broken?”

“But yes, my dear,” Liane’s Maurice told her, and she had seen the
tears shining in his gray eyes.

“And he is badly burned?”

“My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask; not good, not
good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry--and so
dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from
hell itself, because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to
tell you, most lucky lady ever loved.”

“You mean--that he isn’t going to die?”

“I tell you that into those small hands of yours he has given his
life. Hold it fast.”

“Will he--will he get well?”

“He will not walk again; but have you not swift feet to run for
him?”

And there had come to her, sitting on the terrace in the sunshine,
an overwhelming flood of joy, reckless and cruel and triumphant.
Now he was hers for ever, the restless wanderer, delivered to her
bound and helpless, never to stray again. Hers to worship and serve
and slave for, his troth to Freedom broken--hers at last!

“I’m coming,” she had told the tall young Frenchman breathlessly.
“Take me to him--please let’s hurry.”

“_Ma pauvre petite_, this is war. One does not come and go at will.
God knows by what miracle enough red tape unwound to let me through
to you, to bring my message and to take one back.”

“What message, Maurice?”

“That is for you to say, little Janie. He told me, ‘Say to her that
she has my heart; if she needs my body, I will live. Say to her
that it is an ugly, broken, and useless thing; still, hers. She
must use it as she sees fit. Say to her--no, say nothing more. She
is my Janie, and has no need of words. Tell her to send me only
one, and I will be content.’ For that one word, Janie, I have come
many miles. What shall it be?”

And she had cried out exultantly, “Why, tell him that I say----”
But the word had died in her throat. Her treacherous lips had
mutinied, and she had sat there, feeling the blood drain back
out of her face, out of her heart--feeling her eyes turn black
with terror while she fought with those stiffened rebels. Such a
little word “Live!”--surely they could say that. Was it not what
he was waiting for, lying far away and still, schooled at last to
patience, the reckless and the restless? Oh, Jerry, Jerry, live!
Even now she could feel her mind like some frantic little wild
thing, racing, racing to escape Memory. What had he said to her?
“You, wise beyond wisdom, will never hold me--you will never hold
me--you will never----”

And suddenly she had dropped her twisted hands in her lap and
lifted her eyes to Jerry’s ambassador.

“Will you please tell him--will you please tell him that I
say--‘Contact’?”

“Contact?” He had stood smiling down at her, ironical and tender.
“Ah, what a race! That is the prettiest word that you can find for
Jerry? But then it means to come very close, to touch, that poor
harsh word--there he must find what comfort he can. We, too, in
aviation use that word; it is the signal that says--‘Now you can
fly!’ You do not know our vocabulary, perhaps?”

“I know very little.”

“That is all then? No other message? He will understand, our Jerry?”

And Janie had smiled--rather a terrible, small smile.

“Oh, yes,” she told him. “He will understand. It is the word that
he is waiting for, you see.”

“I see.” But there had been a grave wonder in his voice.

“Would it”--she had framed the words as carefully as though it were
a strange tongue that she was speaking--“would it be possible to
buy his machine? He wouldn’t want any one else to fly it.”

“Little Janie, never fear. The man does not live who shall fly poor
Peg again. Smashed to kindling-wood and burned to ashes, she has
taken her last flight to the heaven for good and brave birds of
war. Not enough was left of her to hold in your two hands.”

“I’m glad. Then that’s all, isn’t it? And thank you for coming.”

“It is I who thank you. What was hard as death you have made easy.
I had thought the lady to whom Jeremy Langdon gave his heart the
luckiest creature ever born--now I think him that luckiest one.”
The grave grace with which he had bent to kiss her hand made of the
formal salutation an accolade. “My homage to you, Jerry’s Janie!”
A quick salute, and he had turned on his heel, swinging off down
the flagged path with that swift, easy stride past the sun-dial,
past the lily-pond, past the beech trees--gone! For hours and hours
after he had passed out of sight she had sat staring after him,
her hands lying quite still in her lap--staring, staring--they had
found her there when they came back, sitting where Rosemary was
seated now. Why, there, on those same steps, a bare six months
ago---- Something snapped in her head, and she stumbled to her
feet, clinging to the arm of her chair.

“I can’t _stand_ it!” she gasped. “No, no, it’s no use--I can’t, I
tell you. I----”

Rosemary’s arm was about her, Mrs. Langdon’s soft voice in her
ears, a deeper note from Rosemary’s engineer.

“Oh, I say, poor girl! What is it, dear child--what’s the matter?
Is it the heat, Janie?”

“The heat!” She could hear herself laughing; frantic, hateful,
jangling laughter that wouldn’t stop. “Oh, Jerry! Oh-h, Jerry,
Jerry, Jerry!”

“It’s this ghastly day. Let me get her some water, Mrs. Langdon.
Don’t cry so, Janie--please, please don’t, darling.”

“I c-can’t help it--I c-can’t----” She paused, listening intently,
her hand closing sharply over Rosemary’s wrist. “Oh, listen,
listen, there it comes again--I told you so!”

“Thank Heaven,” murmured Mrs. Langdon devoutly, “I thought that it
never was going to rise this evening. It’s from the south, too, so
I suppose that it means rain.”

“Rain?” repeated Janet vaguely. “Why in the world should it
mean rain?” Her small, pale face looked suddenly brilliant and
enchanted, tilted up to meet the thunderous music that was swinging
nearer and nearer. “Oh, do listen, you people! This time it’s
surely going to land!”

Rosemary stared at her blankly. “Land? What _are_ you talking
about, Janie?”

“My airplane--the one that you said was the fat Hodges boy on
a motorcycle! Is there any place near here that it can make a
landing?”

“Darling child”--Mrs. Langdon’s gentle voice was gentler than
ever--“darling child, it’s this wretched heat. There isn’t any
airplane, dear; it’s just the wind rising in the beeches.”

“The wind?” Janet laughed aloud; they really were too absurd. “Why,
Mrs. Langdon, you can hear the _engines_, if you’ll only listen!
You can hear them, can’t you, Mr. Bain?”

The young engineer shook his head. “No plane would risk flying with
this storm coming, Miss Abbott. There’s been thunder for the last
hour or so, and it’s getting nearer, too. It’s only the wind, I
think.”

“Oh, you’re laughing at me; of course, of course you hear it. Why,
it’s as clear as--as clear as----”

Her voice trailed off into silence. Quite suddenly, without any
transition or warning, she knew. She could feel her heart stand
perfectly still for a minute, and then plunge forward in mad
flight--oh, it knew, too, that eager heart! She took her hand from
the arm of the chair, releasing Rosemary’s wrist very gently.

“Yes, of course, it’s the heat,” she said quietly. She must be
careful not to frighten them, these kind ones. “If you don’t mind,
Mrs. Langdon, I think that I’ll go down to the gate to watch the
storm burst. No, please, don’t any of you come; I’ll promise to
change everything if I get caught--yes, everything! I won’t be
long; don’t wait for me.”

She walked sedately enough until she came to the turn in the
path, but after that she ran, only pausing for a minute to listen
breathlessly. Oh, yes--following, following, that gigantic music!
How he must be laughing at her now, blind, deaf, incredulous little
fool that she had been, to doubt that Jerry would find a way! But
where could he land? Not in the garden--not at the gates--oh, now
she had it--the far meadow. She turned sharply; it was dark, but
the path must be here. Yes, this was the wicket gate; her groping
fingers were quite steady; they found the latch, released it--the
gate swung to behind her flying footsteps. “Oh, Jerry, Jerry!” sang
her heart. Why hadn’t she worn the rose-coloured frock? It was she
who would be a ghost in that trailing white thing. To the right
here; yes, there was the hawthorn hedge--only a few steps more--oh,
now!

She stood as still as a small statue, not moving, not breathing,
her hands at her heart, her face turned to the black and torn
sky. Nearer, nearer, circling and darting and swooping; the
gigantic humming grew louder--louder still--it swept about her
thunderously, so close that she clapped her hands over her ears,
but she stood her ground, exultant and undaunted. Oh, louder
still--and then suddenly the storm broke. All the winds and
the rains of the world were unleashed, and fell howling and
shrieking upon her; she staggered under their onslaught, drenched
to the bone, her dress whipping frantically about her, blinded
and deafened by that tumultuous clamour. She had only one weapon
against it--laughter--and she laughed now, straight into its
teeth. And as though hell itself must yield to mirth, the fury
wavered--failed--sank to muttering. But Janie, beaten to her knees
and laughing, never even heard it die.

“Jerry?” she whispered into the darkness, “Jerry?”

Oh, more wonderful than wonder, he was there! She could feel him
stir, even if she could not hear him; so close was he that if she
even reached out her hand, she could touch him. She stretched it
out eagerly, but there was nothing there--only a small, remote
sound of withdrawal, as though someone had moved a little.

“You’re afraid that I’ll be frightened, aren’t you?” she asked
wistfully. “I wouldn’t be--I wouldn’t--please come back!”

He was laughing at her, she knew, tender and mocking and caressing;
she smiled back, tremulously.

“You’re thinking, ‘I told you so!’ Have you come far to say it to
me?”

Only that little stir; the wind was rising again.

“Jerry, come close--come closer still. What are you waiting for,
dear and dearest?”

This time there was not even a stir to answer her; she felt
suddenly cold to the heart. What had he always waited for?

“You aren’t waiting--you aren’t waiting to go?” She fought to keep
the terror out of her voice, but it had her by the throat. “Oh, no,
no, you can’t--not again! Jerry, Jerry, don’t go away and leave me;
truly and truly I can’t stand it--truly!”

She wrung her hands together desperately; she was on her knees to
him--did he wish her to go lower still? Oh, she had never learned
to beg!

Not a sound, not a stir, but well she knew that he was standing
there, waiting. She rose slowly to her feet.

“Very well--you’ve won,” she said hardly. “Go back to your saints
and seraphs and angels; I’m beaten. I was mad to think that you
ever cared--go back!”

She turned, stumbling, the sobs tearing at her throat; she had gone
several steps before she realized that he was following her--and
all the hardness and bitterness and despair fell from her like a
cloak.

“Oh, Jerry,” she whispered, “Jerry, darling, I’m so sorry. And
you’ve come so far--just to find this! What is it that you want;
can’t you tell me?”

She waited tense and still, straining eyes and ears for her
answer--but it was not to eyes or ears that it came.

“Oh, of course!” she cried clearly. “Of course, my wanderer! Ready?”

She stood poised for a second, head thrown back, arms flung wide, a
small figure of Victory, caught in the flying wind.

And, “Contact, Jerry!” she called joyously into the darkness.
“Contact!”

There was a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the
storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell, and
then grow fainter--fainter still--dying, dying--dying----

But Janie, her face turned to the storm-swept sky, was smiling at
the stars which shone behind it. For she had sped her wanderer on
his way--she had not failed him!




THERE WAS A LADY


There is one point on which Larry Benedick’s best friend and worst
enemy and a lot of other less emphatic individuals are thoroughly
and cordially agreed. Ask his closest female relative or his
remotest business acquaintance or the man who plays an occasional
hand of auction with him at the club why Benedick has never
married, and they will one and all yield to sardonic mirth, and
assure you that the woman who could interest that imperturbable
individual has not yet been born--that he is without exception
the coldest-hearted, hardest-headed bachelor who has ever driven
fluttering débutantes and radiant ladies from the chorus into a
state of utter and abject despair--that romance is anathema to him
and sentiment an abomination.

“Benedick!” they will chorus with convincing unanimity. “My dear
fellow, he’s been immune since birth. He’s never given any girl
that lived or breathed a second thought--it’s extremely doubtful if
he ever gave one a first. You can say what you please about him,
but this you can take as a fact; you know one man who is going
down to the grave as single as the day he was born.”

Well, you can take it as a fact if you care to, and it’s more than
likely that you and the rest of the world will be right. Certainly,
no one would ever have called him susceptible, even at the age when
any decent, normal young cub is ready to count the world well lost
for an eyelash. But not our Benedick--no, long before the gray
steel had touched the blue of his eyes and the black of his hair
he had apparently found a use for it in an absolutely invulnerable
strong box for what he was pleased to call his heart. Then as now,
he had faced his world with curled lips and cool eyes--graceful and
graceless, spoiled, arrogant, and indifferent, with more money and
more brains and more charm and a better conceit of himself than any
two men should have--and a wary and sceptical eye for the charming
creatures who circled closer and closer about him. The things
that he used to think and occasionally say about those circling
enchantresses were certainly unromantic and unchivalrous to a
degree. Rather an intolerable young puppy, for all his brilliant
charm--and the years have not mellowed him to any perceptible
extent. Hardly likely to fall victim to the wiles of any lady,
according to his worst enemy and his best friend and the world in
general. No, hardly. But there was a lady....

It wasn’t yesterday that he first saw her--and it wasn’t a hundred
years ago, either. It was at Raoul’s; if you are one of the large
group of apparently intelligent people whose mania consists in
believing that there is only one place in the world that any one
could possibly reside in, and that that place is about a quarter
of a mile square and a mile and a half long and runs up from a
street called Forty-second on an island called Manhattan, you
undoubtedly know Raoul’s. Not a tea room--Heaven save the mark!
Not a restaurant--God forbid! Something between the two; a small
room, clean and shabby, fragrant with odours more delectable
than flowers. No one is permitted to smoke at Raoul’s, not even
ladies, because the light blue haze might disturb the heavenly
aroma, at once spiced and bland, that broods over the place like a
benediction. Nothing quite like it anywhere else in America, those
who have been there will tell you; nothing quite like it anywhere
else in the world. It costs fine gold to sit at one of the little
round tables in the corner, but mere gold cannot pay for what you
receive. For to Raoul the preparation of food is an art and a
ceremony and a ritual and a science--not a commercial enterprise.
The only thing that he purchases with your gold is leisure in
which to serve you better. So who are you to grudge it to him?

Larry Benedick lunched there every day of his life, when he was in
New York, heedless of a steady shower of invitations. He lived then
in one of those coveted apartments not a stone’s throw from Raoul’s
brown door--a luxurious box of a place that one of the charming
creatures (who happened to be his sister-in-law) had metamorphosed
into a bachelor’s paradise, so successfully that any bachelor
should have frothed at the mouth with envy at the mere sight of it.

It had a fair-sized living room, with very masculine crash
curtains, darned in brilliant colours, and rough gray walls and an
old Florentine chest skillfully stuffed with the most expensive
phonograph on the market, and rows and rows of beautifully bound
books. There was a deep gray velvet sofa with three Chinese-red
cushions in front of the small black fireplace (of course it wasn’t
possible to light a fire in it without retiring from the apartment
with a wet towel tied around the head, crawling rather rapidly on
the hands and knees because all the first-aid books state that any
fresh air will be near the floor--but what of that? After all, you
can’t have everything!)--and there were wrought-iron lamps that
threw the light at exactly the right angle for reading, and very
good English etchings and very gay Viennese prints in red lacquer
frames, and a really charming old Venetian mirror over the mantel.
It was a perfect room for a fastidious young man, and Benedick
loathed it with an awful loathing.

“All the elusive charm of a window in a furniture shop,” he
remarked pensively to his best friend--but at least he refrained
from destroying the pretty sister-in-law’s transports of altruistic
enthusiasm, and left it grimly alone, keeping his eyes averted
from its charms as frequently as possible, and leaving for South
Carolina or northern Canada on the slightest provocation--or
else swinging off to Raoul’s at twelve o’clock with a feeling
of profound relief, when what he fantastically referred to as
“business” kept him chained to New York and the highly successful
living room.

“Business” for Benedick consisted largely of a series of more or
less amicable colloquies with a gray-faced, incisive gentleman in a
large, dark, shining office, and the even more occasional gift of
his presence at those convivial functions known as board meetings.
His father, long dead, had been imprudent enough to sow the wind
of financial speculation, and his unworthy son was now languidly
engaged in reaping a whirlwind of coupons and dividends. It is
painful to dwell on so rudimentary a lack of fair play on the part
of Fate, though Benedick occasionally did dwell on it, with a
sardonic grin at the recollection of the modest incomes received by
the more prudent and thrifty members of the family. He made what
atonement he could for his father’s unjustifiable success by a
series of astoundingly lavish gifts, however, and wasted the rest
of it more or less successfully.

“Business” had kept him in town on that March day when he first saw
her. He had arrived at Raoul’s doorstep at exactly five minutes
past twelve; he lunched early, because he was a disciple of the
Continental schedule, and it also avoided interruptions from
over-fervent friends who frequented the place. The pretty cashier
with her red cheeks and her elaborate Gallic coiffure bestowed her
usual radiant smile on him, and Benedick smiled back, with a swift
response that many a débutante would have given a large piece of
her small soul to obtain. Jules, the sallow and gentle-eyed, pulled
out the little round chair with its padded cushions, pushed in the
little round table with its threadbare and spotless cloth, and bent
forward with pencil poised, the embodiment of discreet and eager
interest.

“_Bonjour, monsieur! Monsieur désire?_----”

This, after all, was nearer a home than anything that Larry
Benedick had known for many a weary year--this warm and peaceful
corner, with old Jules and young Geneviève spreading friendliness
all about him, with Raoul out in the tiled and copper-hung kitchen,
alert to turn his skill to service. Monsieur desired? Well,
kidneys flamboyant, perhaps--and then some artichokes with Raoul’s
Hollandaise--and the little curled pancakes with orange and burnt
sugar in the chafing-dish. Demi-tasse, of course, and Bénédictine.
Not yesterday, you see, that March afternoon!--Jules slipped away,
as elated as though he were bearing with him great good tidings,
and the brown-and-gray kitten came out from under the table,
tapping at the cuff of his trousers with an imperious paw, and
he had a smile for it, too. Here in this tranquil space Monsieur
had all that he desired, had he not? Surely, all. He bent forward
to stroke the pink nose of his enterprising visitor, the smile
deepening until the dark face was suddenly young--and the brown
door opened and she came in.

Benedick knew quite well that it was a raw and abominable day
outside--but he could have sworn that he looked up because the room
was suddenly full of the smell of pear blossoms, and lilacs, and
the damp moss that grows beside running brooks--and that he felt
the sunlight on his hands. There she stood, straight and slim,
in her rough green tweed, with her sapphire-blue scarf and the
sapphire-blue feather in the little tweed hat that she had pulled
down over the bright wings of her hair, her face as fresh and
gay as though she had just washed it in that running brook, her
lovely mouse-coloured eyes soft and mischievous, as though she were
keeping some amusing secret. There was mud on her high brown boots,
and she was swinging a shining new brief case in one bare hand.
Benedick stared at that hand incredulously. It wasn’t possible that
anything real could be so beautiful; velvet white, steel strong,
fine and slim and flexible--such a hand Ghirlan-daijo’s great
ladies of the Renaissance lifted to their hearts--such a hand a
flying nymph on a Grecian frieze flung out in quest of mercy. And
yet there it was, so close to him that if he stretched out his
fingers he could touch it!

The owner of this white wonder stood poised for a moment,
apparently speculating as to whether this was the most perfect
place in the world in which to lunch; she cast a swift glance of
appraisal about the shadowed room with its hangings and cushions
of faded peacock-blue, with its coal fire glowing and purring in
the corner and its pots of pansies sitting briskly and competently
along the deep window-sills; she gave a swift nod of recognition,
as though she had found something that she had long been seeking,
and slipped lightly into the chair at the table next to Benedick’s.
Her flying eyes had brushed by the startled wonder of his face
as though it had not been there, and it was obvious that he
was still not there, in so far as the lady was concerned. She
pounced exultantly on the _carte du jour_ and gave it her rapt
and undivided attention; when Jules arrived carrying Benedick’s
luncheon as carefully as though it were a delicate and cherished
baby she was ready and waiting for him--and Jules succumbed
instantly to the hopeful friendliness of her voice.

But certainly, Mademoiselle could have _sole bonne femme_ and
potatoes allumettes, and a small salad--_oui, oui, entendu_--_bien
fatiguée_, that salad, with a soupçon of garlic in a crust of
bread, and the most golden of oils--yes, and a soufflé of chocolate
with a demi-tasse in which should be just one dash of cognac--oh,
rest assured of the quality of the cognac. Ah, it was to be seen
that Mademoiselle was _fine gourmet_--which was, alas, not too
common a quality in _ces dames_! Fifteen minutes would not be too
long to wait, no? The potatoes--_bon, bon_--Mademoiselle should
see. Jules trotted rapidly off in the direction of the kitchen, and
Benedick’s luncheon grew cold before him while he watched to see
what the miracle at the table beside him would do next.

How long, how long you had waited for her, Benedick the cynic--so
long that you had forgotten how lovely she would be. After all, it
had not been you who had waited; it had been a little black-headed,
blue-eyed dreamer, fast asleep these many years--you had forgotten
him, too, had you not? He was awake now with a vengeance, staring
through your incredulous eyes at the lovely lady of his dreams,
sitting, blithe and serene, within hand’s touch--the lovely lady
who was not too proud to have mud on her boots and who actually
knew what to order for lunch. All the girls that Benedick had
ever known from the fuzzy-headed little ladies in the chorus to
the sleek-locked wives of his best friend and his worst enemy,
ordered chicken à la King and fruit salad and indescribable
horrors known as maple walnut sundaes and chocolate marshmallow
ice cream. But not this lady--oh, not this one! He leaned forward,
breathless; what further enchantments had she in store? Well, next
she took off her hat, tossing it recklessly across the table, and
the golden wings of her hair sprang out alive and joyous, like
something suddenly uncaged--and then she was uncaging something
else, a shabby brownish red book, prying it out of the depths of
the new brief case as though she could hardly wait; he could see
from the way that the white hands touched it that they loved
it dearly--that they had loved it dearly for a long, long time.
It flew open, as though it remembered the place itself, and she
dipped her bright head to it, and was off! Benedick pushed his
untouched plate far from him, leaning forward across the table,
caution and courtesy and decent reserve clean forgotten. What was
she reading that could make her face dance like that--all her face,
the gold-tipped lashes and the brave lips, and the elusive fugitive
in the curve of the cheek turned toward him, too fleeting to be a
dimple--too enchanting not to be one--what in the name of heaven
was she reading? If only she would move her hand a little--ah!

Something came pattering eagerly toward him out of the printed
page--a small, brisk, portly individual with long ears and a
smart waistcoat--his heart greeted it with a shout of incredulous
delight. By all that was wonderful, the White Rabbit! The dim room
with its round tables faded, faded--Benedick the cynic, Benedick
the sceptic, faded with it--he was back in another room, warm with
firelight and bright with lamplight, in which a small black-headed
boy sat upright in a crib, and listened to a lady reading from a
red-brown book--a curly-headed lady, soft-voiced, soft-handed, and
soft-eyed, who for ten enchanted years had read the lucky little
boy to sleep; he had never believed in fairy tales again, after
that soft voice had trailed off into silence. But now--now it was
speaking once more--and once more he believed!

    “Oh, the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh, my dear paws! Oh, my fur
    and whiskers! She’ll have me arrested as sure as ferrets are
    ferrets! Where _can_ I have dropped them?”

    The little boy was leaning forward, flushed and enchanted.

    “Well, but motherie darling, where _could_ he have dropped
    them? Where _could_ he have dropped those gloves?”

“_Monsieur désire?_”

Benedick stared blankly at the solicitous countenance, wrenching
himself back across the years. Monsieur desired--ah, Monsieur
desired--Monsieur desired----

He sat very still after that, until she had sipped the last drop of
black coffee out of the little blue cup, until she had pulled the
hat down over the golden wings and wrapped the sapphire scarf about
her white throat and wedged “Alice” back into the brief case, and
smiled at Jules, and smiled at Geneviève, and smiled at the gray
kitten, and vanished through the brown door.

He sat even stiller for quite a while after she had gone; and then
suddenly bounded to his feet and flung out of the room before the
startled Jules could ask him whether there was not something that
he preferred to the untouched Bénédictine.

It was drizzling in the gray street and he turned his face to it
as though it were sunshine; he glanced in the direction of the
large dark office, and dismissed it with a light-hearted shrug.
Business--business, by the Lord! Not while there was still a spot
to dream in undisturbed. He raced up the apartment-house stairs
three at a time, scorning the elevator, and was in the living room
before the petrified Harishidi could do more than leap goggle-eyed
from his post by the Florentine chest. Harishidi had obviously been
indulging his passion for Occidental music, though you would not
have gathered it from the look of horrified rebuke that he directed
at the Renaissance treasure’s spirited rendition of the “Buzz Town
Darkies’ Ball.” The look conveyed the unmistakable impression that
Harishidi had done everything in his power to prevent the misguided
instrument from breaking out in this unfortunate manner during his
master’s absence, but that his most earnest efforts had proved of
no avail. Benedick, however, was unimpressed.

“For the love of God, shut off that infernal noise!”

Harishidi flung himself virtuously on the offending treasure, and
Benedick stood deliberating for a moment.

“Bring me the records out of the drawer--no, over to the couch--I’m
half dead for sleep after that damned party. Get my pipe; the
briar, idiot. Matches. This the lot Mrs. Benedick sent?”

Harishidi acknowledged it freely, and Benedick shuffled rapidly
through the black disks. Cello rendition of “Eli Eli”; the Smith
Sisters in a saxophone medley; highly dramatic interpretation of
the little idyll from Samson et Delilah; “Kiss Your Baby and Away
We Go” specially rendered by Dolpho, the xylophone king--yes, here
it was.

“An Elizabethan Song, sung by Mr. Roger Grahame of the Santa Clara
Opera Company.”

“Here you are, Hari; put this on your infernal machine. Take the
telephone off the hook and give me another of those cushions.
Where’s an ash tray? All right--let her rip!”

“I play her now?” demanded the incredulous Harishidi.

“You play her now, and you keep right on playing her until I tell
you to stop. What’s more, if I hear another word out of you, you’re
fired. All right--what are you waiting for? Go ahead!”

The quiet room was suddenly flooded with grace and gallantry and a
gay melancholy; a light tenor voice singing easily and happily of
something that was not joy--and was not sorrow--

    “There was a lady, fair and kind,
     Was never face so pleased my mind;
     I did but see her, passing by,
     And yet I love her till I die.
         Till--I--die----”

Fair and kind--a lady with gold wings for hair and gray velvet for
eyes--a lady who knew what to have for lunch and who read “Alice
in Wonderland”--a lady who was tall and slim, and had a mouth
like a little girl, and mud on her high boots--white-handed and
white-throated--pear blossoms in the sunlight--fair and kind--

    “Her gesture, motion, and her smile,
     Her wit, her voice, my heart beguile,
     Beguile my heart, I know not why,
     And yet I love her till I die.
         Till--I--die.”

Her grace, her voice--a lady who walked as though she were about to
dance--a lady who spoke as though she were about to sing--fair and
kind--gold and ivory--he had seen her before--she lived in a castle
and her hair hung down to her heels--he had ridden by on a black
horse and she had thrown him a rose--a castle by the sea--a castle
behind a hedge of thorns--a castle in a dreaming wood--but he had
found her and waked her with a kiss--no, no, it was he who had been
asleep--a long time--a long time asleep--he wanted to hear the end
of the story, but he was so warm and happy, it was hard to keep
awake--the firelight made strange shadows....

     “And so they both lived happily ever after!”
     “Then he did find her, Motherie?”
     “Of course, of course, he found her, Sleepy Head.”
     “Ever, ever after, Motherie?”
     “Ever, ever after, little boy.”...

Fair and kind, Golden Hair, smiling in the firelight--smile
again--ever after, she said--ever, ever after....

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day he was at Raoul’s at a quarter to twelve, and when
Jules asked what Monsieur desired, he told him to bring anything,
it made no difference to him! The stupefied Jules departed to the
kitchen, where he was obliged to remain seated for several moments,
owing to a slight touch of vertigo, and Monsieur sat unmolested
in his chair in the corner, his eyes fastened on the brown door
as though they would never leave it. He was still sitting there,
feverish and preoccupied, half an hour later, having dutifully
consumed everything that Jules put before him without once
removing his eyes from the door. It wasn’t possible--it wasn’t
possible that she wouldn’t come again. Fate could not play him so
scurvy a trick; but let him lay eyes on her just once more, and
he would take no further chances with Fate! He would walk up to
her the second that she crossed the threshold, and demand her name
and address and telephone number and occupation---- And the door
opened, and she came in, and he sat riveted to his chair while she
bestowed a bunch of violets the size of a silver dollar on the
enchanted Geneviève, a smile of joyous complicity on the infatuated
Jules, and a rapturous pat on the gray kitten. After a while he
transferred his gaze from the door to the table next to him, but
otherwise he did not stir. He was thinking a great many things
very rapidly--unflattering and derisive comments on the mentality
of one Larry Benedick. Idiot--ass! As though any lady who held her
bright head so high would not disdain him out of measure if she
could get so much as a glimpse into the depths of his fatuous and
ignoble mind. Ask her for her address indeed! His blood froze at
the thought.

The lady, in the meantime, had ordered lunch and discarded her hat
and pried another treasure from the brief case; this time it was
brown and larger, and she held it so that Benedick could see the
title without irreparably ruining his eyes. “Tommy and Grizel”--the
unspeakable Tommy! She was reading it with breathless intensity,
too, and a look on her face that struck terror to his heart, a
look at once scornful and delighted and disturbed, as though Tommy
himself were sitting opposite her. So this--this was the kind of
fellow that she liked to lunch with--a sentimental, posturing young
hypocrite, all arrogance and blarney--it was incredible that she
couldn’t see through him! What magic had this worthless idiot for
ladies?

Benedick glared at the humble-looking brown volume as though he
would cheerfully rip the heart out of it. He continued to glare
until the white hands put it back into the brief case with a
lingering and regretful touch, and carried it away through the
door; no sooner had it closed than he jammed on his hat and brushed
rudely by the smiling Geneviève and out into the wind-swept street.
There he paused, staring desperately about him, but the sapphire
feather was nowhere to be seen, and after a moment he started off
at a tremendous pace for his apartment, where he proceeded to keep
his finger on the elevator bell for a good minute and a half,
and scowled forbiddingly at the oblivious elevator boy for seven
stories, and slammed the door of the living room so vigorously
that the red-lacquered frames leapt on the wall.

He crossed the room in three lengthy strides, and slammed his
bedroom door behind him even more vigorously. The bedroom was
exactly half the size of the tiled bathroom, so that the artistic
sister-in-law had only been able to wedge in a Renaissance day-bed
and a painted tin scrap basket--but Benedick found it perfectly
satisfactory, as she had permitted him to use books instead of
wall-paper. All the ones that she considered too shabby for the
living room rose in serried ranks to the high ceiling--Benedick
had substituted a nice arrangement of green steps instead of a
chair, and had discovered that he could put either these or the
scrap basket in the bathroom, if it was necessary to move around.
He mounted the steps now, and snatched a brown volume from its
peaceful niche on the top shelf next to “Sentimental Tommy,”
climbed down and sat on the Renaissance day-bed, wrenched the
book open so violently that he nearly broke its back, and read
about what happened to Tommy on the last few pages--served him
damned well right, too, except that hanging was too good for him.
Sentiment! Sentiment was a loathsome thing, not to be borne for a
moment.

The third time that he read it he felt a little better, and he
got up and kicked the scrap basket hard, and telephoned to the
incisive gentleman in the office that he wouldn’t be around
because he had neuralgia and phlebitis and a jumping toothache,
and telephoned his ravished sister-in-law that he’d changed his
mind and would be around for dinner at eight if she’d swear to seat
him next to a brunette. Subsequently he was so attentive to the
brunette that she went home in a fever of excitement--and Benedick
ground his teeth, and prayed that somehow his golden lady might
know about it and feel a pang of the soft and bitter madness known
as jealousy, which is the exclusive prerogative of women. He lay
with his head in the pillow on the Renaissance bed most of the
night, cursing his idiocy with profound fervour, wondering what
insanity had made him think for a moment that he was interested in
that yellow-haired girl, and resolving not to go near Raoul’s for
at least a week. She was probably someone’s stenographer--or a lady
authoress. Every now and then he slipped off into horrid little
dreams; he was building a gallows out of pear trees for a gentleman
called Tommy, and just when he had the noose ready, it slipped
about his own throat--and he could feel it tightening, tightening,
while someone laughed just behind him, very soft and clear--he woke
with a shiver, and the dawn was in the room. He wouldn’t go to
Raoul’s for a month....

At five minutes to twelve he crossed the threshold, and she was
there already with her hat off and a little fat green-and-gold
book propped up against her goblet. Thank God that she had left
that brown bounder at home! Benedick stared earnestly, and felt
a deeper gratitude to Robert Herrick and his songs than he had
ever known before. It was easy to see that she was safe in green
meadows, brave with cowslips and violets and hawthorn and silver
streams, playing with those charming maids, Corinna and Julia.
Benedick breathed a sigh of relief, and when her lunch arrived
he was stricken again with admiration at the perfection of her
choice. Herrick himself could have done no better; the whole-wheat
bread, the primrose pats of butter, the bowl in which the salad
lurked discreetly--but he could see the emerald green of cress, and
something small and silver and something round and ruddy--radishes
and onions shining like jewels! There was a jar of amber honey,
a little blue pitcher of thick cream, and a great blue bowl of
crimson berries--strawberries in March, with a drift of fresh green
mint leaves about them. Here was a lady who was either incredibly
wealthy or incredibly spendthrift! She closed her book when Jules
put this other pastoral before her, and ate as though it might be
a long, long time before she would eat anything again, though she
managed to look as though she were singing all the time. There
was a bit of cream left for the kitten, and she fed it carefully,
patted its white whiskers, and was gone.

Benedick strolled out thoughtfully, remembering to smile at
Geneviève, and feeling more like a good little boy than a ripened
cynic. It was incredible how virtuous it made one feel to be
happy! He wanted to adopt a yellow dog and give money to a beggar
and buy out a florist shop. The florist shop was the only object
accessible, and he walked in promptly; the clerk had spoken to
him before he realized that he couldn’t send her flowers, because
he didn’t happen to know who she was. He might tell him to send
them to the Loveliest Lady in New York, but it was a little
risky. However, he bought an armful of daffodils, and a great
many rose-red tulips, and enough blue and white hyacinths to fill
a garden, and went straight back to his apartment without even
waiting for change from the gold piece that he gave to the clerk.
He handed them over to the startled Harishidi with the curt order
to put them in water; never mind if he didn’t have enough vases.
Put them in high-ball glasses--finger-bowls--anywhere--he wanted
them all over the place. The buyer of flowers then retired and
put on a gorgeous and festively striped necktie, washed his face
and hands with a bland and pleasing soap, brushed his black hair
until it shone, smiled gravely at the dark face in the mirror, and
returned to the sitting room. There he selected a white hyacinth
blossom with meticulous care, placed it in his buttonhole, and
earnestly requested Harishidi to retire and remain in retirement
until summoned.

He spent quite a long time after that, drawing the curtains to shut
out the grayness, struggling despairingly over the diminutive fire,
piling the cushions so that they made a brilliant nest at one end
of the velvet sofa, placing a gold-tooled volume of Aucassin and
Nicolette where she could reach it easily--oh, if he could not send
his flowers to her, he would bring her to his flowers! He adjusted
the reading lamp with its painted parchment shade and dragged a
stool up to the sofa. It was his sister-in-law’s best find--a broad
and solid stool, sedate and comely--he sat there clasping his
knees, his cheek against the velvet of the sofa--waiting. After a
long time, he drew a deep breath, and smiled into the shadows. He
did not turn his head; what need to turn it?

She was there--he could see her sinking far back into the scarlet
cushions, greeting his flowers with joyous eyes. She had on a
cream-coloured dress of some soft stuff, and a long chain of
amber beads; the lamplight fell on her hair and on her clasped
hands--and still he sat there, waiting. What need had they of
speech? There was a perfume in her hair--a perfume of springtime,
fleeting and exquisite; if he reached out his hand he could touch
her. He sat very still; after a little while he felt her hand on
his dark head, but still he did not stir--he only smiled more
deeply into the shadows, and closed his eyes---- His eyes were
still closed when Harishidi came in to ask him if he had forgotten
dinner, and his lips were parted, like a little boy lost in a happy
dream--in a happy, happy dream....

After that, the days passed by in an orderly and enchanted
procession; he watched them bringing gifts to the corner table at
Raoul’s, feeling warm and grateful and safe; too content to risk
his joy by so much as stirring a finger. By and by he would speak
to her, of course; in some easy, simple way he would step across
the threshold of her life, and their hands would touch, never to
fall apart again. She would drop her brief case, perhaps, and he
would give it back to her, and she would smile; she would come into
some drawing room where he was standing waiting patiently and the
hostess would say, “You know Mr. Benedick, don’t you? He’s going
to take you in to dinner.” He would go to more dinners--surely she
must dine somewhere, and dances--surely she danced! Or the gray
kitten might capture that wisp of a handkerchief, and bring it to
him as booty--he would rescue it and carry it back to her--and she
would smile her thanks--she would smile---- It would all be as
simple as that--simpler, perhaps; for the time, he asked no more
than to let the days slip by while he sat watching her across the
table; that was enough.

Ah, those days! There was the one when she brought out a great
volume of Schopenhauer, and laughed all the time she read it; twice
she laughed aloud, and so gay and clear was her derision that
Jules joined in, too. It was probably the essay on Woman, Benedick
decided--the part where he said that ladies were little animals
with long hair and limited intelligence. There was the day when
she read out of a slim book of vellum about that small, enchanting
mischief, Marjorie Fleming, and when Jules put the iced melon down
before her she did not see it for almost a minute--her eyes were
too full of tears. There was the day when she read “War and Peace”
with her hands over her ears and such a look of terror on her face
that Benedick had all that he could do to keep from crossing over
and putting his arms about her, to close out all the dangers that
she feared--even the ones she read about in books.

And suddenly March was over, and it was April, and there was the
day when she took a new volume out of the brief case--so new that
it still had its paper cover with large black letters announcing
that it contained desirable information about Small Country Houses
for Limited Incomes, Colonial Style. She read it with tremendous
intensity and a look wavering between rapture and despair; once she
sighed forlornly, and once she made a small, defiant face at some
invisible adversary--and once she patted a picture lingeringly.

After she had gone, Benedick took his sister-in-law’s automobile,
and drove out to Connecticut, and bought a house--a little old
white house with many-paned windows, that sat on a hill with lilac
bushes around it, and looked at the silver waters of the Sound. It
was perfectly preposterous that she shouldn’t have a house if she
wanted it, and he was glad that she wanted a small country house,
Colonial style, even though it didn’t necessarily imply a moderate
income. For the first time in his life he was glad that his income
was not moderate. When he got back to town he bought a gray
roadster--not too heavy, so that she could drive it. She might want
to be in and out of town a lot; you never could tell.

He told his sister-in-law that he was going to raise Airedales,
because it was impossible to buy a decent puppy these days, and he
discoursed lucidly and affably about a highly respectable Scotch
couple that he was going to get to look after the white house
and supervise the Airedales. After that he devoted most of his
leisure hours to antique shops and auctions, where he purchased any
amount of Sheraton furniture and Lowestoft china and Bristol glass
and hooked rugs and old English chintzes for the benefit of the
Airedale puppies and the Scotch couple. He hadn’t as much time as
formerly, because he had been growing steadily more uncomfortable
at the thought of explaining to those gray eyes and gay lips the
undeniable fact that he had twenty-four hours of leisure to dispose
of every day of his life; so he had wandered over to the dark
office one morning and remarked casually to the gray gentleman at
the desk that he might blow in every now and then and see if there
was anything around for him to do. It appeared that there was
plenty around--so much that he took to blowing in at about nine
and blowing out at about five--and he did it not so badly, though
a good clerk might have done it better. He continued to spend a
generous hour over lunch, however, proving a total loss to the firm
for a considerable time after he returned, sometimes in such an
abandoned mood that there was a flower in his buttonhole.

And then it was May, and the sapphire feather was gone, and she
would come in through the brown door with flowers on her drooping
hat and pale frocks tinted like flowers, cool and crisp as dresses
in a dream. She still had the brief case, but it was absurd to
think that a stenographer would wear such hats; anything so
ravishing would cost a year’s salary. When he wasn’t too busy
watching the way her hair rippled back, showing just the tips of
her ears, he would wonder whether she were a great heiress with an
aversion to jewellery or a successful novelist who had to choose
between pearls and Raoul’s. He had never seen even the smallest
glint of jewels about her; never a gleam of beads at her throat
or a brooch at her waist or a ring on her fingers--sometimes he
thought that it would be pleasant to slip a long string of pearls
about her neck and a band of frosted diamonds about her wrist,
to see her eyes widen at their whiteness. Still, this way she
was dearer, with flowers for her jewels--better leave the pearls
alone--pearls were for tears.

It was incredible how radiant she looked those days; when she came
through the door with her flying step and her flying smile the
very kitten would purr at the sight of her; her eyes said that the
secret that they knew was more delightful and amusing than ever,
and her hands were always full of flowers.

And then there was the day that she came in looking so exultant
that she frightened him; it wasn’t fair that she should look so
happy when she didn’t know about the house on the hill, or the gray
roadster, or the lucky person who was going to give them to her--it
wasn’t fair and it was rather terrifying. Perhaps it would be
better not to wait any longer to tell her about them; she couldn’t
be disdainful and unkind through all that happiness. Of course he
would lead up to it skilfully. He wasn’t a blundering schoolboy; he
was a man of the world, rather more than sophisticated, with all
his wits about him and a light touch. He would catch her eye and
smile, deferential and whimsical, and try some casual opening--“Our
friend the kitten” or “good old Jules slower than usual--spring
turns the best of us to idlers!” and the rest would follow as the
night the day--or better still, as the day the night. It mightn’t
be a bad idea to upset something--his wine glass, for instance; he
raised a reckless hand, with a swift glance at the next table--and
then he dropped it. She was reading a letter, an incredibly long
letter, page after page of someone’s office paper covered with
thick black words that marched triumphantly across the sheets,
and her face was flooded with such eloquent light that he jerked
back his head swiftly, as though he had been reading over her
shoulder. He could not speak to her with that light on her face;
he sat watching her read it through twice, feeling cold and sick
and lonely. He was afraid--he was afraid--he would speak to her
to-morrow----

To-morrow came, and with it his lady in a green muslin frock, and
a shadowy hat wreathed with lilacs; he noted with a slow breath of
relief that she had no brief case, no book, no letters. His coast
was clear then at least; this day she had no better comrade to
share her table--he would go to her, and ask her to understand. He
had risen to his feet before he saw that she had not taken off her
hat; she was sitting with her head a little bent, as though she
was looking at something on the table, her face shadowed by the
drooping hat, her hands clasped before her--and then Benedick saw
what she was looking at. There was a ring on her finger, a small,
trivial, inconsequential diamond, sparkling in its little golden
claw like a frivolous dewdrop; and suddenly she bent her head, and
kissed it. He sat down, slowly and stiffly--he felt old. He did not
even see her go; it was Jules’ voice that made him lift his head.

“_Ah, le printemps, le printemps! V’là la jolie demoiselle qui
s’est fiancée._”

“Yes,” said Benedick. “Spring--in spring it is agreeable to have a
fiancé.”

“Monsieur, perhaps, knows who she is?”

“No,” replied Monsieur amiably. “But she is, as you say, a pretty
girl.”

“She is more than that, if Monsieur pardons. The man whose bride
she will be has a little treasure straight from the good God. What
a nature--what a nature! Generous as a queen with her silver, but
she turns it to gold with her smile. Monsieur has perhaps noted her
smile?”

“No,” replied Monsieur, still amiably. “Bring me a bottle of the
Widow Clicquot, however, and I will drink to her smile. Bring a
large bottle so that I can drink often. It might be better to bring
two.”

He drank both of them under the eyes of the horrified Jules; it
took him all of the afternoon and part of the evening to accomplish
it, but he won out. All during the hours that he sat sipping the
yellow stuff he was driving his mind in circles, round and round
over the same unyielding ground, round and round again. It was a
hideous mistake, of course; there was nothing irretrievable in an
engagement. He could make her see how impossible it was in just
a few minutes; it might be a little hard on this other fellow at
first, but that couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t been looking for her,
starving for her, longing for her all the days of his life, this
other fellow, had he? Probably he had told half-a-dozen girls he
loved them--well, let him find another to tell. But Benedick--whom
else had Benedick loved? No one, no one, all the days of his life.

Surely she would see that; surely when he told her about the white
house and the gray roadster she would understand that he couldn’t
let her go. He had been lonely too long--he had been hard and
bitter and reckless too long--he would tell her how black and empty
a thing was loneliness; when she saw how desperately he needed her,
she would stay. When he told her about the two corner cupboards in
the low-ceilinged dining room, full of lilac lustre and sprigged
Lowestoft, and the painted red chairs in the kitchen, and the
little stool for her feet with the fat white poodle embroidered in
cross-stitch, she would see all the other things that he had never
told her! There was the tarnished mirror with the painted clipper
spreading all its sails--he had hung it so that it would catch her
smile when she first crossed the threshold; there was the little
room at the head of the stairs that the sun always shone into--he
had built shelves there himself, and put in all his Jules Verne and
R. L. S. and Oliver Optic and Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers
and some unspeakably bad ones of Henty; he had been waiting for her
to tell him what kind of books little girls read, and then he was
going to put them in, too. Of course she couldn’t understand those
things unless he told her--to-morrow when she came he would tell
her everything and she would understand, and be sorry that she had
hurt him; she would never go away again.

At eleven o’clock Jules once more despairingly suggested that
Monsieur must be indeed fatigued, and that it would perhaps be
better if Monsieur retired. Monsieur, however, explained with great
determination and considerable difficulty that he had an extremely
important engagement to keep, and that all things considered,
he would wait there until he kept it. True, it was not until
to-morrow, but he was not going to take any chances; he would wait
where he was. Raoul was called in, and expostulated fervently,
“_Mais enfin, Monsieur! Ce n’est pas convenable, Monsieur!_”

Monsieur smiled at him, vague and obstinate, and Raoul finally
departed with a Gallic shrug, leaving poor Jules in charge, who sat
nodding reproachfully in a far corner, with an occasional harrowed
glance at the other occupant of the room. The other occupant sat
very stiff and straight far into the night; it was toward morning
that he made a curious sound, between defeat and despair, and
dropped his dark head on his arms, and slept. Once he stirred, and
cried desperately: “Don’t go--don’t go, don’t go!”

Jules was at his side in a moment, forgiving and solicitous.

“_Monsieur désire?_”

And Monsieur started up and stared at him strangely--only to shake
his head, and once more bury it deep in his arms. It was not Jules
who could get what Monsieur desired....

It was late the next morning when he waked and he consumed a huge
amount of black coffee, and sat back in his corner, haggard and
unshaven, with a withered flower in his buttonhole, waiting for her
to come through the door--but she did not come. Not that day, nor
the next, nor the next; he sat in his corner from twelve to two,
waiting, with a carefully mocking smile on his lips and a curious
expression in his eyes, wary and incredulous. He had worked himself
into an extremely reasonable state of mind; a state of mind in
which he was acidly amused at himself and tepidly interested in
watching the curtain fall on the comedy--he blamed a good deal on
the spring and a taste for ridiculously unbalanced literature; the
whole performance was at once diverting and distasteful. This kind
of mania came from turning his back on pleasant flirtations and
normal _affaires de cœur_; it was a neatly ironical punishment that
the God of Comedy was meting out to pay him for his overweening
sense of superiority. Well, it was merited--and it was over! But
he still sat in the corner, watching, and the fourth day the door
opened, and she came in.

She had on a gray dress, with a trail of yellow roses across her
hat and a knot of them at her waist, and a breeze came in with her.
She stood hesitating for a moment in the sunlight, and then she
went quickly to where Geneviève sat at her high desk, and stretched
out her hands, with a pretty gesture, shy and proud. The sunlight
fell across them, catching at a circle above the diamond ring--a
little golden circle, very new and bright. Benedick rose to his
feet, pushing back his chair--he brushed by her so close that he
could smell the roses; he closed the brown door behind him gently
and leaned against it, staring down the shining street, where the
green leaves danced, joyous and sedate, upon the stunted trees.
Well, the curtain had fallen on the comedy; that was over. After
a minute, he shrugged his shoulders, and strolled leisurely down
to the real-estate agent and sold him the little white house,
lock, stock, and barrel, including some rather good china and
a lot of old junk that he had picked up here and there. It was
fortunate that the young couple from Gramercy Square wanted it; he
was willing to let it go for a song. Yes, there was a view of the
Sound, and he’d done quite a lot of planting; oh, yes, there was
a room that could be used as a nursery--lots of sun. There was his
signature, and there was the end of it--the papers could be sent
to his lawyers. He then sauntered over to his sister-in-law’s and
presented her with the gray roadster; he was about fed up with
motoring, and he’d changed his mind about Airedales. Dogs were
a nuisance. After a little pleasant banter he dropped in at the
club and played three extremely brilliant rubbers of auction, and
signed up for a stag theatre party to see a rather nasty little
French farce. He didn’t touch any of the numerous cocktails--he
wasn’t going to pay her the compliment of getting drunk again--but
he laughed harder than any one at the farce, and made a good many
comments that were more amusing than the play, and his best friend
and his worst enemy agreed that they had never seen him in such
high spirits.

He went back to the apartment humming to himself, and yawned
ostentatiously for Harishidi’s benefit, and left word not to wake
him in the morning--and yawned again, and went to bed. He lay
there in the blackness for what seemed hours, listening to his
heart beat; there was a tune that kept going round in his head,
some idiotic thing by an Elizabethan--“Fair and kind”--he must go
lighter on the coffee. “Was never face so pleased my mind----”
Coffee played the deuce with your nerves. “Passing by----” Oh, to
hell with it! He stumbled painfully out of bed, groping his way to
the living room, jerking on the light with a violence that nearly
broke the cord. One o’clock; the damned clock must have stopped.
No, it was still ticking away, relentless and competent. He stood
staring about him irresolutely for a moment, and then moved slowly
to the Florentine chest, fumbling at the drawer. Yes, there it
was--“An Elizabethan Song, Sung by Mr. Roger Grahame”--“There
was a lady, fair and kind”--There was a lady---- He flung up the
window with a gesture of passionate haste, and leaning far out,
hurled the little black disk into deeper blackness. Far off he
heard a tinkling splinter from the area; he closed the window, and
pulled the cord on the wrought-iron lamp, and stumbled back to the
Renaissance bed.

He was shaking uncontrollably, like someone in a chill, and he had
a sickening desire to weep--to lay his hot cheek against some kind
hand, and weep away the hardness and the bitterness and despair.
Loathsome, brain-sick fool! He clenched his hands and glared
defiance to the darkness, he who had not wept since a voice had
ceased to read him fairy tales a long time ago. After eternities
of staring the hands relaxed, and he turned his head, and slept.
He woke with a start--there was something salt and bitter on his
lips; he brushed it away fiercely, and the clock in the living
room struck four. After that he did not sleep again; he set his
teeth and stared wide-eyed into the shadows--he would not twice be
trapped to shame. He was still lying there when the sun drifted
through the window; he turned his face to the wall, so that he
would not see it, but he did not unclench his teeth....

It was June, and he took a passage for Norway, and tore it up the
day that the boat sailed. There was a chance in a thousand that she
might need him, and it would be like that grim cat Fate to drop him
off in Norway when he might serve her. For two or three days she
had been looking pale; the triumphant happiness that for so long
she had flaunted in his face, joyous and unheeding, was wavering
like the rose-red in her lips. It was probably nothing but the
heat; why couldn’t that fool she had married see that she couldn’t
stand heat? She should be sitting somewhere against green pines,
with the sea in her eyes and a breeze lifting the bright hair from
her forehead.

She never read any more. She sat idle with her hands linked before
her; it must be something worse than heat that was painting those
shadows under her eyes, that look of heart-breaking patience about
her lips. And Benedick, who had flinched from her happiness,
suddenly desired it more passionately than he had ever desired
anything else in his life. Let the cur who had touched that gay
courage to this piteous submission give it back--let him give it
back--he would ask nothing more. How could a man live black enough
to make her suffer? She hardly touched the food that was placed
before her; Jules hovered about her in distress, and she tried to
smile at him--and Benedick turned his eyes from that smile. She
would sit very quiet, staring at her linked hands with their two
circles, as though she were afraid to breathe--she, to whom the air
had seemed flowers and wine and music. Once he saw her lips shake,
terribly, though a moment later she lifted her head with the old,
valiant gesture, and went out smiling.

Then for a day she did not come--for another day--for another--and
when once more she stood in the door, Benedick felt his heart give
a great leap, and stand still. She was in black, black from head
to foot, with a strange little veil that hid her eyes. She crossed
the room to her table, and sat down quietly, and ordered food, and
ate, and drank a little wine. After Jules had taken the things away
she still sat there, pressing her hands together, her lips quite
steady--only when she unlinked them, he saw the faint red crescents
where the nails had cut.

So that was why she had had shadows painted beneath her eyes; he
had been ill, the man who had given her the rings; he had died.
It would be cruel to break the hushed silence that hung about her
with his clumsy pity, but soon he would go to her and say, “Do not
be sad. Sadness is an ugly thing, believe me. I cannot give you
what he gave you, perhaps, but here is the heart from my body. It
is cold and hard and empty; take it in your hands, and warm it. My
need of you is greater than your need of him--you can not leave
me.” He would say that to her, after a little while.

The gray kitten touched her black skirt with its paw, and she
caught it up swiftly, and laid her cheek against its fur. It was
no longer the round puff that she had first smiled on, but it was
still soft--it still purred. She put it down very gently, and rose,
looking about her as on that first day; at the place where the fire
had burned in the corner, at the pansies, jaded and drooping in
their green pots; once again her eyes swept by Benedick as though
he were not there. They lingered on Geneviève for a moment, and
when they met Jules’ anxious, faithful gaze she parted her lips as
though to speak, and gave it up with a little shake of her head,
and smiled instead--a piteous and a lovely smile--and she was
gone....

He never saw her again. That was not a hundred years ago--no, and
it was not yesterday; the steel has come into his hair and his eyes
since then, but sometimes he still goes to Raoul’s to lunch, and
sits at the corner table, where he can see the brown door. Who can
tell when it might open and let in the spring--who can tell what
day might find her standing there once more, with her gay eyes and
her tilted lips and the sunlight dancing in her hair?

Benedick’s best friend and his worst enemy and the world and his
pretty sister-in-law are very wise, no doubt, but once--once there
was a lady---- He never touched the tip of her fingers, but she was
the only lady that Benedick ever loved.




LONG DISTANCE


Devon snapped the stub of his cigarette into the fire with a
movement of amused impatience, his fingers more eloquent than his
thin, impassive countenance.

“Nothing, was it?”

“No, nothing--that unspeakable wind.” Anne Carver gave a last
reluctant glance over her shoulder into the shadowed hall, and
pulled the door to behind her, turning her face to the warm, bright
room with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry, Hal; it’s outrageous of
me--right in the middle of that thrilling story, too.”

In spite of her slim height and the sophisticated skill with which
she had wound her velvety black hair about her small head--in spite
of the length of filmy train that swept behind her, she looked like
some charming and contrite child as she came slowly across the room
to the deep chintz chair and the dancing warmth of the fire.

“But it’s nonsense, my dear girl; sheer, unmitigated nonsense!
Here you are spoiling what might have been a delightful evening
by working yourself up into a magnificent state of nerves, and
over what, I ask you? Over nothing, over less than nothing! Poor
old Derry telephones that he won’t be able to get out to-night
because he’s been dragged in on some fool party, and you apparently
interpret it into meaning that you’re never going to lay eyes
on him again in this world. You’ve been restless as a witch all
evening--every time a door’s slammed or a latch has rattled you’ve
fairly leapt out of your skin; and permit me to inform you that
you’re getting me so that I’m about to start leaping, too. Nice,
cheerful atmosphere for the stranger within your gates, my child.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Hal. I’ll be good, truly. It’s only that----”

“Only what, for the love of Heaven? You aren’t expecting him back
to-night, are you?”

“Well, of course, I know that he said he couldn’t possibly manage
it, but he might--he can manage anything. And he wanted so
dreadfully to see you; it’s been years, hasn’t it?”

“Three,” replied Devon concisely.

“Well, you see! And of course he’d want to see _me_ dreadfully,
because it’s been years since he’s seen me, too; we have breakfast
at half-past seven. Isn’t that hideous? It takes him an hour to get
into town; I do hate that. A whole hour away--think of it----”

“Anne, I blush for you; I do indeed. It’s embarrassing for any
well-behaved bachelor to hear you talk. It’s sinful to lavish that
amount of devotion on any man that lives.”

“Not on Derry.” The clear face was a little flushed, but the
shining eyes met his unwaveringly. “You lavish it, too, Hal! I used
to be bored to distraction by the tales that you’d pour out for
hours on end about the fabulous student who was on his way back
from Paris to spread havoc amongst the maidens of America. I used
to laugh at you--remember?”

“Of course I remember.” The dark, ironic face was suddenly touched
with a very charming smile. “That first evening that I brought him
over after supper, and he talked until a quarter to one until he
had everyone as excited as he was about things that we actually
wouldn’t give a snap of our fingers for; I can see him standing by
the mantel now, with every golden hair on his head ruffled up, and
those crazy sherry-coloured eyes of his half mad with excitement,
ranting like a Frenchman and laughing like a lunatic--I can see you
with your face tilted up to him, forgetting that any of the rest of
us were alive---- You had on a gray dress and someone had sent you
white flowers, and you were wearing a long string of green beads
that hung to your knees----”

“Hal, you’re making that up! Four years----”

“Is four years too long to remember green beads and white flowers?
Perhaps you’re right! But it isn’t too long to remember Derry’s
voice when he told us about the night that he and the drunken cab
driver spent in the Louvre, is it? Shades of Gargantua, how that
kid could laugh! After all, there’s never been any one else just
like him, has there?”

“Not ever--oh, not ever. It’s the cruellest shame that he couldn’t
be here now; he’d love it so, and you could have such a beautiful
time reminiscing--oh, I can’t bear having him away on a night like
this. When I went to the door just then those trees by the gate
were straining like dogs on a leash, and the wind had wrenched a
great branch off the lilac bush. I do hate November! And the rain
like gray floods--and so _cold_, Hal. He oughtn’t to be out in
that, truly. He ought to be here where he could play with us, where
it’s warm and kind and--safe. Do you suppose they were motoring?”

“I don’t suppose anything at all. My dear girl, you aren’t going to
start that all over again?”

“Ah, it’s frightfully silly, I know. Old married
people--three-year-old married people--they oughtn’t to mind things
like that. But it’s the first time that he’s been away all night,
and I’m--oh, I’m ridiculous. Scold me, scold me hard!”

“You’re a very difficult person to scold, all things considered.
It’s those unprincipled eyelashes, probably. First time in three
years, honestly, Anne? Good Lord, it’s unbelievable!”

“_Hal!_”

“Well, but my good child! Long Island and the twentieth century and
the tottering state of holy matrimony--it’s simply defying the laws
of gravity! Do you sit here hanging the crane every night of your
lives?”

“Oh, Hal, you lovely idiot! Of course we don’t; we go out any
amount and have people here a lot, and go in town, too. Only
we happen to like each other--rather--and to like to play
together--rather--so we just go ahead and do it. It’s simply
happened that up to now nothing turned up that we couldn’t do
together; _of course_ it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Of course I know that, Hal.” She leaned forward, the firelight
painting flying shadows on the vivid, high-bred little face. “But
I’m an utter goose about Derry. I feel _empty_ when he isn’t
around, and I don’t care who knows it.”

“A bit hard on the rest of us, isn’t it? Still, if it’s the same
Derry that I practically bestowed on you at the altar I’m rather
inclined to get your point of view. Not changed for the worse?”

“Changed for the better, thank you!” laughed Derry’s wife. “Better
and better and better every minute, once removed from your sinister
influence.” She smiled her gay affection at him, and then suddenly
the smile wavered, faded--she sprang to her feet, trailing her
blue-green draperies over to the long window.

“Don’t you _hate_ that noise, Hal? No, listen. The rain’s out to
drown the world, and that wind----” She shivered, staring out into
the menacing blackness, raging like a wild beast on the other side
of the lighted window. “Poor Hal, it’s going to be simply awful
for you! It’s a good ten minutes’ walk to the club, and these back
roads turn into mud soup if it even showers! I do think it’s a
wicked shame.”

“Perhaps I’d better be getting on my way----”

“No, no!” There was a note of sheer panic in her voice, though she
laughed it down valiantly. “Why, it can’t be eleven, and he isn’t
going to call up till twelve. You simply have to entertain me; I
won’t be abandoned yet. No, I mean it. Let’s start again--about
Brazil. You were telling me about Brazil----”

“You aren’t even remotely interested in Brazil,” he accused. “But
I’ll talk to you about any place from Peoria to Patagonia, if
you’ll stop wandering about like a lost soul, and come back to the
fire, like a good child.”

“Yes,” replied the good child obediently, dropping the curtain.
“Does--does it seem cold to you in here, Hal?”

“Cold? It’s heavenly warm; if I were a cat I’d purr for you.”

“It feels--cold, to me,” said Anne Carver, spreading her hands
before the leaping flames. “As though the wind had got in through
the window somehow, and into my blood--and into my bones----”

“Nonsense,” said Devon sharply. “You got chilled standing over
there; you’re an unconscionable goose, and I’m beginning to be
strongly out of patience with you. Sit down and put your feet on
the fender--want something over your shoulders?”

She shook her head, holding her hands closer to the fire.

“No, please--I’d rather not sit down just yet. It was the window,
of course. Don’t be cross; I do want to hear the rest of that
about Brazil. Some day I’m going there; some day I’m going to
find a country where there’s no such time as autumn--no such
month as November, full of dead leaves, and wind and cold--and
emptiness. Tell me what’s prettiest there; there must be so many
pretty things? Birds with shining feathers--butterflies like
flowers--flowers like butterflies--gold like sunshine and sunshine
like gold--oh, I’m warmer just for thinking of it! Tell me what was
prettiest?”

“I saw nothing half so pretty as a lady with the lamplight falling
about her, bending over pansies black as her hair in a bowl green
as her eyes.”

“Oh!” She straightened swiftly, giving the flowers a last friendly
touch, and facing him, lightly flushed, lightly reproachful.
“_Green_, Hal? That’s not pretty at all--and it stands for
something shameful.”

Devon raised quizzical eyebrows.

“Never felt the honest pangs of jealousy, Anne?”

“But how could I, even if I were capable of such cheapness and
ugliness? I’ve never in my life cared for any one but Derry.”

“And Derry, lovely lady, would never give you cause?”

“_Derry?_” The startled incredulity of that cry rang into clear
mirth. “Why, Hal, it may be difficult for you to believe, but Derry
_loves_ me.”

Devon tapped the ashes off his cigarette, and sat staring for a
moment at the reddened tip.

“It doesn’t precisely strain my credulity to the breaking point,”
he replied drily. “No, I can imagine that Derry might love you. It
hardly requires any colossal stretch of imagination on my part,
either. I’ve loved you myself for thirteen years.”

“Hal!”

“Loved you with every drop of blood in my body. There’s no use
looking stricken and melodramatic, Anne. I’ve never worried you
much about it, have I?”

“No,” she whispered voicelessly.

“No. Well, then, don’t worry me about it now, there’s a good
girl. I’m off for Ceylon to-morrow, and I haven’t the most remote
intention of making a nuisance of myself to-night. You don’t have
to remind me of the fact that Derry’s my best friend, that I was
his best man, that you are his wife. I have an excellent memory
for such trifling details myself. It’s only fair to add, however,
that I wouldn’t give a tuppenny damn for the whole collection if it
weren’t for one other.”

“Which other?” she asked, her eyes meeting his steadily, infinitely
gentle and remote.

“The rather important one that you’re happy,” replied Devon evenly.
“I came all the way back from Brazil to find out whether he was
making you happy--and now I’m off to-morrow.”

“Happy is a poor word for what he has made me,” she said. “You
should have known that, you who know Derry. Oh, Hal--oh, Hal, how
could you?”

“It isn’t done, I know,” he assented. “It’s always the cad and the
villain who is caught out making love to his friend’s wife at all
hours of the night. But there’s a slight distinction in my favour,
you see; I am loving you, not making love to you.”

“You’re hurting me,” she told him. “Pretty badly.”

“You have no right to be hurt. It’s nothing ugly that I am giving
you. Out of pain and bitterness and despair I’ve wrought something
rather fine; it isn’t like you to disdain it, my dear. Ever since
you were a little girl with dark braids swinging to your waist,
I’ve brought you presents; every corner of the earth I’ve ransacked
just to have you touch those gifts with your fingers, and say,
‘That’s lovely, Hal--that’s lovely’--and smile. The only thing
worth giving you was not in my power to bestow, but I wanted to
make sure that you had it, no matter whose hands had held it out
to you. Happiness is yours, Anne--I have nothing left to give you
but my love. I swear to you that there is not one thing in it that
gives you the right to say that it hurts you. Believe me, you can
take it in your hands--and smile.”

“Yes. Yes, Hal.” She smiled at him, grave and misty-eyed--and he
smiled back.

“Then that’s about all, my dear, and I’ll be going. It’s no hour
at all for a poor bachelor to be awake. Good-night, Anne; sweet
dreams to you.”

“Hal, I don’t want you to go--please, I don’t want you to go.”
There was something so desperate in her low entreaty that he
halted with lifted brows. “I know that it’s utterly foolish and
unreasonable--and--and selfish, but I simply can’t bear to be left
here alone until Derry calls me up. Please, please don’t leave me.”

“Very well.” He turned back to his chair slowly. “This isn’t like
you, you know.”

“I know.” She sat staring down at her locked fingers. “It isn’t a
bit like me; I haven’t any nerves at all, as a rule--not enough
to make me sympathetic even. Derry says my lack of imagination is
simply appalling--that unless I can see a thing or touch it or
taste it or smell it or hear it, I simply won’t believe that it
exists--that I don’t really believe that the world’s round, because
it looks flat to me! He laughs about it, but I do honestly think
that it worries him.”

“It generally worries Derry when someone doesn’t see things his
way.” Devon smiled reminiscently.

“Well, you know how _he_ is. He fully believes that they’re trying
to signal to us from Mars, and he almost goes wild because no one
pays any attention to the signals! He thinks that phonographs are
much more incredible than Ouija boards, and that telephones are
far more extraordinary than telepathy. It wouldn’t be any effort
to Derry to believe that the world was shaped like a hat-box, with
blue and green stripes and a nice little handle to carry it around!”

“You must be a great trial to him, Madame Materialist.”

“Oh, he wrings his hands over me. He says for any one to seem as
spiritual and be as literal as I am is nothing more nor less than a
swindle. Oh, oh, if he could see me to-night!”

“But will you be good enough to tell me what in the name of Heaven
_is_ the matter with you to-night?”

“I don’t know; I don’t know.” She drew a long breath, making a
piteous effort to smile. “I’m--frightened.”

“Frightened of _what_?”

“I don’t know, I tell you.” She glanced about her with a long,
despairing shiver. “Of the night--of the world--of the room--of--of
everything.”

“The room! You know when you talk like that, Anne, you make me
seriously consider ringing up a doctor. I don’t believe that all
America holds a more delightful room--gayer or kinder or more
friendly; it’s nothing short of a miracle what you’ve done to
this old barn! It’s the most reassuring room I’ve ever set my foot
in; you know, when you come into it with its fires and flowers and
lights, you can almost hear it singing and laughing to itself,
‘Here--here dwells happiness.’”

“Oh, yes, you’re right--it has been happy.” Her eyes strayed over
its treasures; the shelves warm and bright with books, with the
beloved Lowestoft standing like flowers against the panelled cream
of the walls, the lustre gleaming in blue and copper bravery along
the firelit mantel, the glazed chintz holding out its prim nosegays
proudly for all to see--the English prints on the walls echoing the
gay warmth of the hooked rugs on the floor--she brought her haunted
eyes back to Devon.

“It’s a pretty room,” she said in a strange little voice. “I do
think it’s quite a pretty room. But do you know what it looks like
to me to-night? To-night it looks to me like a corpse that someone
had dressed in a flowered frock and a ribboned hat.”

“Anne!” His voice cracked out like a whip. “Now that’s enough;
you’re to pull yourself together at once, or I’m going to call up
the doctor. That’s an abominably morbid thing to say--it’s simply
not healthy. I’m not joking, my dear; I have every intention of
calling him up if you haven’t yourself in hand in the next five
minutes.”

He leaned across to the table, drawing the shining black instrument
closer toward him.

“D’you think I’m sick?” she asked piteously. “You know, I do think
I must be sick. I’m so--I’m so dreadfully cold.”

“Here----” He rose abruptly. “Where’s your scarf?”

“No--no--it isn’t a scarf I want. I’m cold inside, dreadfully,
dreadfully. It isn’t a scarf.”

“You’re worrying me badly, Anne. Look here, what is it? This party
of Derry’s, honestly?”

“Yes, the party. It’s foolish, I know; I know--don’t say it,
please--I know.”

“Well, but what about it? Did Derry seem worried himself? Did he
sound upset?”

“No. He sounded--casual. As casual as--as casual as----” She made
a little despairing gesture with her hand. “I can’t tell you how
casual he sounded.”

“Well, then----”

“Well, then, but that’s it, Hal. Derry isn’t a bit a casual person,
and here were you for the first time in three years--and here was
I, and he knows how I loathe being left alone out here with the
maids--and he sounded as though it were--nothing. Just nothing at
all.”

“And is this honestly the mole-hill out of which you’ve built your
mountain?”

“No--I don’t know; I can’t even explain it to myself--how could
I explain it to you? It wasn’t anything tangible at first. Just
a feeling of--of discomfort--something vague and not pleasant; I
couldn’t even put my finger on it. I told myself that I was being
silly and unreasonable--I did indeed. You mustn’t think that I
enjoy this kind of thing. I hate it, I hate it.”

“But I’m so utterly at sea to account for this, my dear, and I
want to help you. You’re tormenting yourself about something real
if we could only put our finger on it. Something that Derry said
or did that worried you; you can’t make me believe that you’ve
manufactured all of this out of thin air! It’s too unlike you--why,
ever since that first day I met you, a pale mite of a thing with
great eyes and long braids, brave and proud and gentle in the midst
of the rest of those young hoydens, I’ve found you exquisitely fair
and adorably, adorably reasonable. No one’s ever been like you,
Anne; you mustn’t wreck my world by showing me little clay feet
to-night.”

“Trying to flatter me into being a good child? That’s dear of you,
but oh, I’m beyond flattery. I’m making up for any past arrears of
reason to-night, I promise you.”

“Well, then, let’s try to get to the bottom of it--hunt the good
old subconscious into the open! Now what exactly was this famous
telephone conversation, word for word?”

She turned her head restlessly.

“Oh, Hal, what does it matter? Very well--only I’ve told you once,
you know. He said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, dear, but I won’t be able to
get out this evening. Tell Hal that I’m sorry as the dickens, but
that we can have lunch at the office to-morrow; one sharp. That’ll
give him plenty of time to get off again on his globe-trotting.’
And I said, ‘But what time will you get out?’ He said, ‘Six-thirty
to-morrow, as usual. I may bring Joe Carey along with me.’ I was
so surprised that I almost lost my voice, Hal, and I said, ‘Why,
Derry, not _to-night_?’ And he just laughed, and said, ‘No; I’ve
been roped in on the darnedest party you ever heard of--got to run
now, or I’d explain. I can’t possibly get out of it. You’ll be
awfully amused when I tell you. It’s a good joke on me!’ I said,
‘But where are you going?’ And Derry said, ‘Lord knows! I’ve got to
run, honestly, dear. Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll call you up when
it’s over, and let you in on the whole blooming thing. It’s too
good to sleep on; wait till you hear! It may be late--will you be
awake at twelve?’ And I said, ‘I’ll be awake at six if you don’t
call up. Promise, Derry.’ And he said, ‘Promised! Not later than
twelve. Give Hal my best--see you both to-morrow.’ And--he rang
off.”

“That was absolutely all there was to it?”

“Absolutely all.”

“Very well. I’ll bet you five thousand dollars to a pansy, Lady
Tragedy, that the midnight expedition runs somewhat on these lines.
Mr. Jabez K. Rugg from Omaha, Nebraska, blows into our Derry’s
office late this afternoon with an interesting proposition. He has
heard that he is the most promising young architect in America, and
as he is desirous of presenting his third wife with a cross between
a Moorish palace and a French château for a little anniversary
surprise he has applied to Derry for some sound advice, for which
he is willing and eager to disburse colossal sums. Time presses,
however, and the worthy Mr. Rugg yearns to invest his precious
hours in New York both profitably and pleasantly. He suggests
that the promising young architect put on his hat, lock up his
office, and sally forth into the night, which they will spend
together, chattering of business and painting the unfortunate
town a brilliant red. He doesn’t happen to know the ropes, but he
has a really touching confidence in our Derrick. And our Derrick,
fired with the desire to hang pearls about your neck and sables
about your shoulders, wafts a good-night kiss to the pleasant
anticipation of firelight and candlelight, and sallies forth into
what the poet refers to as ‘the lights of old Broadway.’ And there
you are! Please pick me out a nice pansy.”

“That’s all very clever and amusing, Hal, but it isn’t especially
convincing. And it doesn’t relieve me any more than if someone
tried to cheer things up by doing a fox-trot to the funeral march.
You needn’t scowl; it doesn’t. If it was as simple as that, why
didn’t he explain it at the time?”

“My dear child, he was evidently in a tearing hurry--he’d have
had to go into elaborate explanations to make it clear, and he
obviously wasn’t in any position to indulge in the luxury of
explanations. The impetuous Mr. Rugg may have been clamouring at
the door, or tooting his horn underneath the window. At any rate,
he’s going to call you up in a bare half hour, and clear up the
whole thing; he’s apt to keep his word, isn’t he?”

“_Apt_ to?” she echoed scornfully. “He’d keep his word if the world
came to an end. I thought that you knew him.”

At the disdain in her voice something violently resentful flared in
the dark eyes that met hers.

“Why, so did I,” he returned evenly. “But apparently I was
mistaken. The Derry I knew was not a plaster saint, you see!”

“Nor is the Derry that I know--plaster.” Her voice shook, but she
held her head very high. “Are you trying to make me mistrust him,
Hal? Be careful, please; you are only making me mistrust you.”

“Oh, good God!” He flung at her a look of such revolt and despair
that the small frozen face softened. “Look here, don’t--don’t
let’s make more of a mess of this. You can’t believe that kind of
thing of me, Anne; you may know Derry, but you’ve known me longer,
after all. I’d cut my throat before I’d try to come between you
two. Derry’s worth a thousand of me, of course--I know. He’s made
you happy, and nothing that I could do in this life or the next
would ever repay him for that. But just for a moment it galled me
hideously to have you lavishing that flood of adoration on any man
that lived: it was a flick on a raw wound, and something deep in me
yelled out rebellion. You think jealousy a cheap and ugly thing,
you say--well, now you know just how cheap, just how ugly it can
be!”

“Ah, I’m sorry----” She leaned to him, all gentleness once more.
“I’m sorry that I was hateful; it’s nothing but these unspeakable
nerves, truly. Let’s forget it all, shan’t we? Do you think it’s
letting up a little outside? It doesn’t sound quite so--so savage,
does it?” As though resentful of her waning terror, the beast
outside flung itself at them once more, pouncing on the house with
a long and terrible roar, shaking it in its monstrous claws as
though it would rattle the flimsy barriers of wood and glass out
of their cracking frames. She shrank deeper into the chair with a
tremulous laugh. “Oh, no, it’s incredible--no, _listen_ to it. I’ll
wager that it’s literally tearing trees up by the roots and----”
She broke off tensely. “Hal, you don’t think that it could damage
the wires, do you?”

“No, no; nonsense! It sounds a great deal worse than it is; this
house is nothing but a rattletrap, I tell you. It takes a worse
storm than this to put a telephone out of commission.”

“If he doesn’t telephone, I can’t bear it,” she said softly.
“That’s not rhetoric. I simply can’t bear it.”

“Well, we can settle that,” said Devon briefly. “I’ll get Central
and----”

The telephone that he reached for suddenly gave a faint jangle--a
small, far-off warning of sound--and then it rang aloud, sharp and
imperative.

“Oh, _Hal_!” Her voice was an exultant quiver. “No, no, give
it to me; he’s early, isn’t he? It’s not nearly twelve, is it?
Yes--yes, this is Mrs. Carver--this is Anne, darling----” The
thrilled voice wavered and flagged. “Oh--oh, I’m sorry; you must
have the wrong number.... Yes, it’s Mrs. Carver--Mrs. Derrick
Carver. No, but it’s a mistake.... No, no one’s been using the
wire this evening; no, it hasn’t rung at all. I’ve been rather
expecting a call, but the wire’s been perfectly clear since
nine.... What?... I can’t hear--there’s a singing on the wires....
What?... No, the receiver hasn’t been off; I’m sorry that you’ve
had so much trouble getting us, but I really think that there’s
some mistake--perhaps the maids----” She bit her lip, with a glance
of despairing amusement at Devon. “Why, yes, it’s possible that
someone else has been trying to get a call through to me, but none
has come through.... Yes, it might have been long distance....
What? You’ve been trying for an hour? Well, that really isn’t my
fault, is it? If you’ll tell me what you want.... I can’t hear;
please speak a little louder.... No, it doesn’t make any difference
whether any one else is here or not, you can give the message to
me. I’m quite as capable of hearing what you have to say as any
one else.... No, I most certainly will not; please tell me what
you want, or I shall simply ring off.... Yes. Yes. I can hear....
Oh, its _Headquarters_. Well, you can tell for yourself that the
telephone’s not working well; there’s that singing on the wires and
every now and then it buzzes, too. I suppose it’s this storm; I’m
so glad you’re working on it. Do see if there’s not something that
you can do; I _am_ expecting an important call any minute. Can’t
one of your men?... Well, then, what on earth did you call up for?
I do think that this service---- _Oh_----” Her voice died suddenly
in her throat, and at the look in her eyes Devon leapt to his feet.

“Here, Anne--give it to me!”

She shook her head, fighting desperately to get back her voice.

“No, no--wait.... Yes, I heard you perfectly--yes, Police
Headquarters. I didn’t understand. It’s some mistake, of course....
No.... No, he’s not here.... Well, then, if you knew that, what do
you want?... I don’t know where--I don’t know, I tell you.... I
can’t hear you--please spell.... Green’s? Breen’s?... No, I never
heard of such a place.... No, I don’t know who he went with; it was
some kind of a party--some kind of a.... Who?... Lola? Lola what?
No, no, never mind--I never heard of her--never.... Please--please
wait a minute--I want to ask you a question--just one. Please. I’ve
answered all of yours, haven’t I?... Then--where is Mr. Carver?
Where is he?... No, no, you know where he is--you do--you do--you
do! You have to tell me--You have to--you.... Hal! Hal!”

She thrust the telephone toward him, the frantic voice slipping and
stumbling in its haste.

“Make them tell you--you’re a man--make them--make them----”

Her teeth were chattering so violently that the words were lost;
she clung to the table edge, shaken with a dreadful and racking
tremor, her tortured eyes fastened on his face.

“What the devil do you mean, calling up at this hour of the night?”
demanded Devon violently. “I don’t care who you are; it’s a damned
outrage, ringing up a woman at this hour and frightening the heart
out of her. One of your dirty charges for speeding, I’ll bet.... If
you’ve got Mr. Carver there, send him to the ’phone and send him
quick.... Well, if it comes down to that, I don’t like your tone,
either.... What?... What?... Oh, report and be damned; you’re going
to get a report on yourself that’ll blow the inside of your head
out.... Well, get me Mr. Carver then and snap into it.... I can’t
hear.... Where is he then?... Where?... Oh, speak louder--where is
he?... _What?..._”

There was a moment of absolute silence, and then he spoke again,
very quietly.

“Yes, I heard you; I heard you perfectly--be good enough not to
shout.... Yes.... No, I’ll explain to Mrs. Carver.... Well, I can’t
give you credentials over the telephone, but I have known Mr. and
Mrs. Carver for years; I was at school with him--yes. My name’s
Devon.... D-e-v-o-n. Henry Devon.... Yes, I’ll drop in to see
you to-morrow.... No, you can’t speak to Mrs. Carver--no, that’s
final. I’d be much obliged if you’d give me any details that you
have. Just run over the facts.... Yes.... I didn’t get that....
Oh--blonde.... No, I couldn’t tell you.... No, you’re on the wrong
track; there has been no trouble of any kind between them.... Well,
there isn’t any explanation--not any; it’s--it’s.... Look here,
give me your number and I’ll call up again in a few minutes....
Yes. 5493?... oh, 53!... In about fifteen minutes.... Yes.”

He placed the receiver slowly on the hook, and stood staring down
at the little black instrument that had been so vocal, and now was
dumb.

“Hal?” The voice was not more than a breath, but at its sound he
shuddered, as though he were cold. “Hal?”

“Sit down, Anne; here, I’ll pull it closer to the fire--that’s it.”

“Hal, what did that man say? Has there been an accident?”

“Something like that.”

“Is Derry--hurt?”

“Yes, dear.”

She sat quite still, only her fingers stirring, drawing the silken
tassel on her girdle back and forth, back and forth.

“Is Derry--dead, Hal?”

“Yes, dear.”

She let the girdle slip from her fingers, lifting her hands to push
back the weight of hair from her forehead with a small sigh, like a
tired child.

“I think it’s just some mistake, don’t you, Hal?”

“I wish to God that I could think so.”

“Well--but what made them think it was Derry?”

“He had letters--cards--initials on his cigarette case.”

“Oh, yes, it’s a diamond-shaped monogram--awfully pretty. I gave
it to him last Christmas; you can’t think how pleased he was.
D.H.C.--Derrick Horn Carver---- Who was Lola?”

“She was a--a girl who was with him.”

“Was she? Where did it happen?”

“In New Jersey, somewhere this side of Princeton.”

“Please tell me just what happened. Did another automobile hit
them?”

“No.”

After a long moment she said again in that dreadful, gentle little
voice.

“Well? Then what was it? I’m waiting.”

“Anne, I don’t know how to tell you. I’d rather have the heart torn
out of my body then tell you. Wait----”

“I’m through waiting. Is it as bad as that? Hurry up, please. What
happened? Where did they find him?”

“In a road-house near Princeton--a place called Breen’s.”

“Was he alone?”

“No--there was a girl with him. They don’t know who she was; her
handkerchief had ‘Lola’ on it.”

“Had she killed him?”

“No.”

“How do they know she hadn’t?”

“Because she was shot herself--in the back.”

“Then who killed him?”

“They----” He set his teeth, the sweat standing out on his
forehead. “I’m not going to tell you any more about it now.
Wait--wait----”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going out through that door and walk
until I get to New York. Who killed him?”

“They say he killed himself.”

“Killed himself? I never heard of such ridiculous nonsense.” She
was speaking as quietly and evenly as though she were discussing
the labour problem, frozen to a calm more terrible than any
madness. “Why should he have killed himself?”

“My God, how do I know? There was no one else to kill him--the
pistol was still in his hand.”

“Where were the rest of the party?”

“There was no one else in the party. The proprietor said that they
came alone, arrived at about nine and ordered supper--it was after
ten when they heard the shots.”

“The proprietor probably did it himself,” said Anne Carver
softly. “You let them say these things about Derry without
contradiction--you, who know that he would die rather than give
pain to any wretched little animal that lives?”

“I can’t believe it, Anne. I can’t believe it--but what else in
God’s name can I believe?”

“You can believe what you please; and you evidently please to
believe something more filthy than any nightmare that I have ever
had.”

“You are being extraordinarily cruel, Anne. What explanation do you
give?”

“There are a thousand. Robbery----”

“But nothing that he had was touched----”

“He was protecting the girl----”

“Against whom?”

“It might have been blackmail--it might have been a maniac; it
might have been anything, anything, anything but the thing that you
think. If Derry were here he would strike you dead for what you
believe of him. I wish that he were here to strike you dead.”

“I wish it, too. Believe me, life does not very greatly appeal to
me at present.”

“Did you think that if you destroyed my faith in him I would fall
weeping into your arms?” she asked smoothly. “Spare yourself the
trouble. I would die before I touched you with a finger, now that I
know what you think of him.”

“By God!” He towered suddenly above her. “That’s enough, I’m off.
You’ll live yet to regret that, Anne.”

“No--no--no--don’t leave me--don’t, don’t.” She caught at his arm
as though she were drowning--slipping, slipping deeper into icy
water. For a moment he thought that she was going to die where she
sat in the great chintz chair. “No, no; I’ll be good--I’ll be good.
I didn’t mean it, truly, truly. Hold me, hold me--you loved him,
too, didn’t you, Hal?”

“Yes, dear.”

“If he were here he’d tell us how it happened--you’d see. He said
it was an awfully good joke on him, too good to keep. He’d tell us.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Isn’t it too bad not to believe in God and Heaven and angels and
Ouija boards? Then I could pretend that I could see him again, and
that he would tell me. Derry believed all that kind of thing, but I
never believed in anything but Derry--and now he’s gone. What time
is it?”

“A minute or so to twelve, by this clock.”

“He didn’t keep his word, either, did he? He said not later than
twelve--promised! Think of Derry breaking a promise----”

“Anne--Anne----”

“Oh, I know--of course he’s dead, but still--he was Derry. The
wind’s worse, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“When it pounces like that, you can see the flames flatten out; it
comes down the chimney. Look--it’s burning lower. I’m cold--I’m
cold----”

“I’ll get more wood. Is it in the hall?”

“No, let it burn out. It’s late; you must go, mustn’t you? I don’t
want you to go--there’s too much wind. It sounds as though it were
alive--it sounds as though it were the only thing alive in the
world--listen----”

She leaned far forward in the winged chair, and suddenly above the
rush and clamour of the wind the telephone rang out, loudly and
urgently. Again--again. She sat quite still, with lifted hand,
her incredulous eyes frozen on the small black messenger blaring
out its summons, the receiver fairly quivering on the hook.
Again--again--strident and insistent--again. Devon rose slowly to
his feet.

“I’ll answer it.”

“No,” breathed Anne. “No.”

“It’s probably Headquarters again.”

“No,” she whispered. “No--no--it’s not Headquarters again.”

She stumbled out of the chair, clinging to the arms, groping,
uncertain, like someone suddenly gone blind, and then in a swift
rush she was past him, and the telephone was fast in her hands.

“Yes,” she said clearly. “Long distance--yes, I know.... It’s
Anne, dear, it’s Anne.... I can’t hear--it’s so far away--can’t
you speak louder? Please, please.... Can you hear me? Can you?...
Listen--listen.... I can’t hear very well--listen--you were going
to tell me about the party. Remember?... The party--you were going
to explain.... No--no--no--I can’t hear.... Make me hear--make me
hear--say it again!... No, no, don’t go--no, you can’t go.... No!
Derry! Derry!”

The terrible cry tore through the room like something unchained,
and Devon sprang to her.

“Take your hands away,” she panted. “Don’t dare--don’t dare....
Central!” She jangled the hook frenziedly. “Central--you cut me
off.... Central.... No, no, I won’t excuse it--never, never....
Get him back, I tell you--get him back.... No, I don’t know
the number.... No--you mustn’t say that--you _can_ help me....
You can....” She was weeping terribly, throwing back her head
to keep her lips clear of the flooding tears, stammering
desperately, “No--no.... It was long distance, I tell you--long
distance--long----”

Her voice rose--fell--was suddenly and startlingly silent. After
a long moment she let the receiver slip from her fingers; it
swung limply across the blue-green draperies while she stood very
straight, holding the telephone against her heart.

“There’s no one on the line,” she said, in a small, formal,
courteous voice.

Devon tried to speak, failed, tried again.

“It was a mistake?”

“Oh, no.” She smiled forgivingly at him. “It wasn’t a mistake; it
was Derry. He wanted to explain to me, but I couldn’t hear. It was
my fault, you see--I couldn’t hear.”

She stood quite still, stroking the small dark thing against her
heart with light and gentle fingers, and then, with an infinitely
caressing gesture, she bent her head to it--closer, closer, still
smiling a little, as though against her curved lips she heard the
echo of a far-off voice.




PHILIP THE GAY


Fairfax Carter sat up very straight in the great carved walnut bed,
and plaintively inspected the breakfast tray which the red-cheeked
Norman maiden had just deposited beside her. Those eternal little
hard rolls--the black bowl of coffee beneath whose steaming
fragrance lurked the treacherous chicory--the jug of hot thin
milk--the small brown jar of pale honey--she bestowed a rebellious
scowl on the entire collection. She felt suddenly, frantically
homesick for a bubbling percolator, for thick yellow cream and
feathery biscuits, for chilled crimson berries with powdered mounds
of sugar. Marie Léontine, briskly oblivious, was coaxing the very
small fire in the very large chimney into dancing animation.

“_V’la!_” she announced triumphantly, with all the hearty deference
that is the common gift of the French servant. “_Beau matin, p’tite
dame!_”

“_Oui_,” conceded the “small lady” grudgingly. She shivered
apprehensively as Marie Léontine shoved the copper water jug
closer to the flames, and trotted smiling from the room. Ugh!
How in the world could any nation hope to keep clean and warm
with three sticks of wood and four teaspoonfuls of water? She
remembered another country--a bright and blessed country--where
water rushed hot and joyous from glittering faucets into great
shining tubs--where warmed and fleecy towels hung waiting to fold
you hospitably close. She shivered again, forlornly, scanning the
stretch of distance across the bare floor to the hook where the
meagre towel hung limp and forbidding. “_La douce France!_” Ha! She
pulled the tray toward her, still scowling.

Even when she scowled, Fair Carter was more distracting looking
than any one young woman has a right to be. She was very
small--absurdly small sitting bolt upright in the great dark
bed--but she had enough charms to equip any six ladies of ordinary
size and aspirations. There was the ruffled glory of her hair,
warmer than gold, brighter than bronze, and her rain-coloured
eyes--and the small, warm mouth, and the elfin tilt to her brows.
There was that look about her, eager and reckless and adventurous,
that made your heart contract, when you remembered what life did
to the eager and reckless and adventurous. It had made a great
many hearts contract. It had made one despairing young adorer from
Richmond say: “Fair always looks as though she were carrying a
flag--and listening to drums.” And it had wrung tribute from her
father, who had been all her family and all her world, and who had
adored her even more than the young man from Richmond. “She’s the
bravest of all the fighting Carters, is my Fair. And never quite
so brave as when she’s frightened. Panic arms her with really
desperate valour!”

The bravest of the fighting Carters swallowed the dregs of the
coffee bowl, pushed the tray from her, and bestowed a sudden and
enchanting smile on one of the dark carved figures on the bedposts.
There were four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but she
liked Mark the best. He had a very stern face and a little lion.

“Morning,” she saluted him affably, and if St. Mark’s head had
not been made of walnut he would have lost it. She had kept the
most potent of her charms in reserve, like a true daughter of
Eve. Fair’s extravagant prettiness might steel the sceptical,
leading them to argue that so ornamental a head must necessarily be
empty, and that no one could look that way long without becoming
unbearably vain, spoiled, and capricious. But if she spoke just
once--if she said any three indifferent words at random--the
veriest sceptic was undone for ever. Because Fair had a Voice.
Not the coloratura kind--perhaps Patti could do more justice to
_Caro Nome_--but a voice which Galli-Curci and the nightingale
and the running brook and church bells and Sarah Bernhardt might
well envy. She could sing a little--small, candle-lit songs about
love, and absurdly stirring things that had marched down through
the centuries, and haunting bits of lullabies--she had a trick of
chanting them under her breath, as though it were to herself that
she was singing. But when she spoke--ah, then any coloratura that
ever lived might well shed tears of bitter envy. For the voice that
Fair Carter used for such homely purposes as wishing lucky mortals
good day and good night and God-speed was compact of magic. It was
wine and velvet and moonlight and laughter and mystery--and for
all its enchantment, it was as clear and honest as a nice little
boy’s. It did remarkable things to the English language. Fair would
have widened her eyes in cool disdain at the idea of indulging
in such far-advertised Southern tricks as “you all” and “Ah
raickon” and “honey lamb,” but she managed to linger over vowels
and elude consonants in a way that did not even remotely suggest
the frozen North. It reduced English to such a satisfactory state
of submission that she only experimented half heartedly with any
other language. A Chinaman would have understood her when she said
“Please”--a Polynesian would have thrilled responsive to her “Thank
you.”

Therefore she had gone serenely on her way during those two
terrible and thrilling years in France, those three terrible and
bitter years in Germany, ignoring entirely the fact that the
Teutons had a language of their own, and acquiring just enough of
the Gallic tongue to enable her to indulge in the gay and hybrid
banter of her beloved doughboys--a swift patter consisting largely
of “_Ah oui_,” “_ça ne fait rien_” and “_pas compris!_” It had
served her purpose admirably for a good five years, but it had
proved a broken reed during the past five weeks. The De Lautrecs
were capable of speaking almost any kind of French--Monsieur le
Vicomte leaned toward a nice mixture of Bossuet and Anatole France,
Madame his ancient and regal mother to Marivaux with sprightly
touches of Voltaire, Laure and Diane, to René Bazin when they were
being supervised and Gyp when they weren’t--Philippe le Gai to a
racy and thrilling idiom, at once virile and graceful, as old as
the Chanson de Roland, as new as Sacha Guitry’s latest comedy. But
after several courteous and tense attempts to exchange amenities
with Laure’s “Little American” they had abandoned the tongue of
their fathers and devoted their earnest attention to mastering
the English language. It was easy enough for Philippe and Laure,
of course; they already knew a great deal more about English
literature than Fair had dreamed existed, though they tripped over
the spoken word, but the other members of the family laboured
sternly and industriously, while their small guest surveyed their
efforts with indulgent amusement. It seemed quite natural and
reasonable to Fairfax Carter they they should continue to do so
indefinitely--they wanted to talk to her, didn’t they? Well, then!
They were getting on quite well, too, she reflected benevolently,
still smiling at St. Mark, who stared back at her so unresponsively
that she suddenly ceased to smile.

“I suppose you don’t understand English, either?” she demanded
severely. “’Bout time a little old thing like you started to learn
it, I should think!”

Her eye wandered to the travelling clock ticking competently away
on the desk, and rested there for an electrified second.

“Mercy!” she murmured, appalled, and was out of the bed and
across the room with all the swift grace of a kitten. Half-past
nine, and the De Chartreuil boys were to ride over for a game of
“croquo-golf” at ten! Her toes curled rebelliously at the contact
of the cold flags, but she ignored them stoically, pouncing on
the copper jug and whirling across the room like a small, bright
tempest. What a divine day, chanted her heart, suddenly exultant,
as she splashed the water recklessly and tumbled into her clothes.
It was wonderful to feel almost well again--to feel weariness
slipping from her like a worn-out garment. The sun came flooding in
through the deep windows, gilding the faded hangings--gilding the
vivid head--she could hear horses’ hoofs beneath her window, and
she flung it wide, leaning far out.

“_Bonjour, Monsieur Raoul--bonjour, Monsieur André!_ Oh, Laure, are
you down already?”

“Already? This hour, small lazy one! Quick now, or we leave thee!”

“No, no,” wailed Fair. “I’ll be there--I’m almost there now, truly.
Save the red mallet for me, angel darling--it’s the only one I can
hit with. Don’t let her go, Monsieur André!”

“Never and never, Mademoiselle. We are your slaves.”

She knotted her shoe-laces with frantic fingers, snatched up the
brown tam from the table, and raced down the corridor between the
swaying tapestries like a small wild thing. But half way down she
halted abruptly. Behind one of the great doors someone was singing,
gay and ringing and reckless, a gallant thing, that set her heart
flying.

    “_Monsieur Charette à dit a ces Messieurs
     Monsieur Charette à dit----_”

Philippe le Gai was singing the old Vendée marching song that he
had translated for her the day before.

For a moment she wavered and then, thrusting her hands deep in her
pockets, she took a long breath. “Morning, Monsieur Philippe!” she
challenged clearly.

The song broke off, and Fair could see him, for all the closed
doors--could see his shining black head and the dark young face
with its recklessly friendly smile, and its curiously unfriendly
eyes, gray and quiet. She could see---- The blithe voice rang out
again.

“And a most good morning to Mistress Fairy Carter! Where is she
going, with those quick feet?”

“She’s going to play croquo-golf with Laure and Diane and the De
Chartreuils. It’s such a heavenly beautiful day. You--you aren’t
coming?”

“But never of this life!” laughed the voice. “How old you think
we in here are, hein? Seven? Eight? We have twenty-nine years and
thirty-nine gray hairs--we don’t play with foolish children.
Only fairies can do that! You be careful of the ball going by old
Daudin’s farm, see; there’s a sacred traitor of a ditch just over
the hill--hit him hard and good, that ball, and maybe you clear
it. Maybe you don’t, too! It is one animal of a ditch!” The light,
strong laughter swept through the door, and Fair swayed to it as
though it were a hand that pulled her. Then she turned away with a
brave lift to her head.

“Thanks a lot--I’ll be careful. See you this afternoon, then.”

But the light feet finished their journey down the gray corridor
and the worn flight of stone steps in an ominously sedate fashion.
No, it was no use; it was no use at all. She felt suddenly
discouraged and baffled, she who a few minutes before had been a
candle, brave and warm and shining--only to have a careless breath
blow out the light, leaving nothing but a cold little white stick
with a dead black wick for a heart. It was horribly unfair, and
someone should most certainly pay for it; someone who was sitting
blithe and callous and safe behind those heavy doors--heavy doors
of oak, and heavier ones of cool indifference. She drew a quivering
breath, and straightened, as though she had heard far off a bugle
sing. Oh, how dared he, how dared he be indifferent? He, who idled
all his life away, paying no tribute to the world save laughter,
a useless, black-haired, arrogant young good-for-nothing? How
dared he be indifferent to beauty and riches and grace and wit and
kindness, when they lingered at his side, tremulous and expectant?
It was worse than cruel to be indifferent to the personification
of all these attributes--it was crass, intolerable stupidity. She
made a sudden violent gesture, pushing something far from her. That
dream was ended; she was through. She would tell them to-night
that her visit was over--that to-morrow she must be on her way to
Paris--and America.

But at the thought of America her feet faltered to a halt, as
though she were reluctant to go one step nearer to that enchanted
country, empty now and strange, since Dad had gone. How could she
go back to that great house with its white pillars and echoing
halls?--how could she face its cold and silent beauty without
his arms about her? No, no, she couldn’t--she was afraid--she
was afraid of loneliness. While she had had her work, while she
had had those thousands of brown young faces lifted to her in
comradeship and worship and mirth, she had fought off the nightmare
of his going. No one had known but Laure--Laure who had loved “the
little American” from the first day that she had come laughing
and tiptoeing down the long room with contraband chocolates for
Laure’s bitter, dying poilus--Laure who had held her in her tired
young arms all the terrible night after the cable came--Laure who
had wept when a tearless and frozen Fair had set off for Germany
with her division--Laure who had come all the way to Coblenz to
bring her back to Normandy when she had literally dropped in her
tracks two years later. Dear Laure, who had healed and tended this
small alien, she would be loath to leave her go.

Fair’s lip quivered; she felt suddenly too small and solitary to
face a world that could play such hideous tricks. It was bad enough
and thrice incredible to have rendered Laure’s brother impervious
to her every enchantment, but it was sheer wanton cruelty to have
made him utterly unworthy of any lady’s straying fancy--and alas,
alas, how fancy strayed! The bravest of all the fighting Carters
was badly frightened; the whole thing savoured of black magic. She,
who had flouted and flaunted every masculine heart that had been
laid at her feet since she had put on slippers, to have fallen,
victim to a laugh and a careless word! Why, she barely knew him,
he held so lightly aloof, courteous and smiling and indifferent;
it was hatefully obvious that he preferred his own society to any
that they could offer. He wouldn’t play--he wouldn’t work--he
wouldn’t even eat with them. Of course he had been in the hospital
for ages, but he had been out of it for ages, too, and it was
criminal folly to continue to pamper any one as he was pampered.
A man--a real _man_--would die of shame before he would permit
his sisters to give music lessons while he locked himself in his
room and laughed. Never was he with them, save for the brief hour
after _déjeuner_ when they drank their cups of black coffee under
the golden beech trees--and for that heavenly space after dinner
in the great salon, full of firelight and candlelight and falling
rose-leaves and music, with Madame de Lautrec stitching bright
flowers into her tapestry frame and Monsieur le Vicomte smiling
his courteous and tragic smile into the leaping fire in the carved
chimney, and the fresh young voices rising and falling about the
piano over which Laure bent her golden head--Diane’s silver music
lifting clearly, Laure’s soft contralto murmuring like far waters,
and Philippe singing as his troubadour ancestor might have sung,
fearless and true and shining--Fair caught her breath at the memory
of that ringing splendour, and then looked stern. It was ridiculous
to worship any one as the De Lautrecs worshipped their tall
Philippe and it was obviously highly demoralizing for him--highly.
Laure was the worst; it was as though she couldn’t bear to have him
out of her sight for a minute; if he rose to go--oh, if he even
stirred, she was at his side in a flash, her hand slipped into his,
all her white tranquillity shaken into some mysterious terror at
the thought that he might escape her again.

“No, no!” she would cry passionately when Fair rallied her with
flying laughter. “You do not know what you say, my Fair. I have no
courage left; none, none, I tell you. He is my life--and for four
years every morning, every night I made myself say: ‘You will not
see him again, you will not hear him again, you will not touch him
again. But you will be brave, you hear? You will be brave because
it is for France.’ Now France has no more need of my courage--and
that is very well, because I have no more to give her. It is all
gone. I will never be brave again.”

She was the only one that Philippe would suffer to come near him in
all the long hours that he spent behind those dark barred doors;
often, as Fair sped by on light feet, she could hear the murmur
of their voices, low and absorbed--shutting her out, thought Fair
forlornly, more than any lock on any door. What did they find to
talk about, hour after hour, blind and deaf to the world that lay
about them, golden under the October sun? What spell did Laure use
to bind him, what magic to dispel all the endless witchery that
Fair had spread before him, first carelessly, then startled into
wide-eyed consciousness and finally, during these last flying days,
driven to despairing prodigality? She bit her lip, blinking back
the treacherous tears fiercely. Some day--some day he should pay
for this indifference, and pay with interest. The loitering feet
paused again while their owner visualized, through the mist of
unwelcome tears, a contrite Philippe dragging himself to grovel
abjectly at her feet, begging for one small word of mercy and of
hope. The vivid countenance suddenly assumed an expression of
exquisite contentment.

“No, Philippe,” she would tell him, lightly but inflexibly, “no, my
poor boy, it would be sheer cruelty to mislead you. Never, under
any circumstances could I----”

“_Enfin!_” rang out a richly indignant voice. “Do you walk in your
sleep, my good goose? We wait and we wait until we are one half
frozen, and you arrive like the snail he was your little brother
and----”

“Oh, Laure, I _am_ sorry! Box my ears--no, hard--you tell her to
box them hard, Monsieur André!”

“I, Mademoiselle? But never--I think we are well repaid for our
vigil, hey, Raoul? Here is that very red mallet with which you will
beat us all. We take Bravo with us, Diane?”

Diane shook her curly head dubiously at the frantic police dog.

“Who holds the leash; you, André? Last time he get loose, he bite
three sheep--three, before we catch him. You hear, monster?”

Fair and Bravo exchanged guilty glances.

“Well, but Diane, he pulled so; truly he did. He went so fast,
right over those hedges, and the leash cut through my mittens,
and----”

Laure and Diane yielded to outrageous laughter.

“Raoul, you should see them! Right over those sticking hedges they
go, Bravo ahead, big like three wolves, and Fair ’way behind at the
other end of the leash, so small like the little Red Riding Hood,
and so fast like she was flying! Oh, _bon Dieu_! I thought we die
laughing!”

“Very, very funny,” commented Fair bitterly. “Specially for me. How
are we going to-day?”

“How if we go across the little meadow to the Gates and home by the
Cœur d’Or? Too far, Raoul?”

“We will be back for lunch? _À la bonheur_--we go. Ah, well hit,
Mademoiselle. Straight like arrows, too!”

Fair raced after the red ball, her scarf flying behind her like a
banner, wings at her heels, stars in her eyes, tragedy forgotten.

Three more strokes like that would get her to the meadow--oh,
wonderful to be alive, to be swift and light and sure, to feel
the wind lifting your hair, and the sun warming your heart in a
world that was once more safe and kind. Dear world--dear France,
dear France, so kind to this small American--she absolved it
lavishly from its sins of cold water and bitter coffee; where
else in all the world could you find a game of the inspiring
simplicity of croquo-golf--a game whose sole equipment was a ball
and a mallet--whose sole object was to cover as much space in as
few strokes as possible? Where else could you find such comrades
to play it with, grave and eager as children, ardent-eyed and
laughing-lipped? She smote the ball again, her voice flying with it.

“Oh, Laure, as I live and breathe, it’s cleared the ditch!

    ‘Monsieur Charette hath said to all his peers,
     Monsieur Charette hath said to all his peers,
     Come, good sirs!
     Now let us sally forth and whip these curs!’”

The exultant chant wavered for a moment as the proud possessor of
the ball cleared the ditch, too, and took up her triumphant lilt,
crescendo:

   “‘Take up thy gun, my good Gregory!
     Take up thy virgin of ivory--
     Fill up thy drinking gourd right cheerily--
     Our comrades have gone down
     To fight for Paris Town!’”

André de Chartreuil swung up beside her, breathless and laughing.
Luck was with him; all the English that he had mastered as liaison
officer raced to the tip of his tongue.

“But what a child! How old are you, Mlle. Fairfax Carter?”

“Too old,” mourned Fairfax, shaking her bright head till the
curls danced in the sun. “Much, much too old--old enough to know
better.” She pounced on the half-buried ball with a small shriek of
excitement. “Ah ha, my little treasure, a mere turn of the wrist
and--bet I make the gate in four strokes.”

“Bet you do not,” replied André obligingly.

“Done; all the mushrooms that you find in Daudin’s meadow to--to
what?”

“To the very great privilege of kissing the tips of your fingers.”
Young De Chartreuil’s voice was carefully light.

“Monsieur André!” Fair, her mallet poised for the blow, paused long
enough to bestow a distracting glance through her lashes, oddly at
variance with her maternal tone. “You aren’t going to begin that
kind of thing, are you?” Her laughter rang out, gay and lovely and
mocking.

Young De Chartreuil smiled back at her--a not very convincing
smile. She was the most enchanting creature that he had ever met,
but her lack of discretion froze the marrow in his bones.

“Mademoiselle, one so charming is privileged to forget that one may
also be kind,” he remarked formally.

Fair stopped laughing. “Oh, nonsense!” she returned abruptly,
forgetting that one may also be polite. She hit viciously at the
ball, scowling after it more like a cross little boy than a lady of
Romance. “There--see what you made me do!” The astonished André met
her accusing gaze blankly.

“I, Mademoiselle?”

“Yes, sir, you.” The tone was unrelenting. “I’m a great deal
kinder than I have any business being,” she added darkly. “I
certainly am. Sooner or later every single one of you turn on me
like--like--vipers, and tell me that it’s not possible that I could
have been so everlastingly kind and patient and wonderful if I
hadn’t meant something by it. Goodness knows what you’d all like
me to do,” she murmured gloomily. “Make faces and bark like a dog
every time one of you comes near me, I s’pose. Where’s that ball? I
wish I were dead.”

This time André’s smile was clearly unforced.

“Oh, no one in the world is droll like you!” he stated with
conviction. “But no one. No, do not bark like a little dog--I
will be good, I swear.” He shrugged his shoulders philosophically.
“After all, if God had made you tender hearted you would spend your
days weeping for the ones you broke. So this way it is best, is it
not so?”

Fair beamed on him graciously. “Well, of course!” she assented
with conviction. “And I’m certainly thankful that you see it. If
you’d had about seventy-eight thousand soldiers spending their
every waking minute telling you that they’d fade away and die if
you weren’t kind to them, you’d see that the novelty of it would
wear off a little. Wear off a good deal.” She gave the ball a
rather perfunctory hit. After all, Fairfax Carter on the subject of
Fairfax Carter was more absorbing than any game ever invented. She
drew a deep breath and started off headlong on her favourite topic.
“It’s perfectly horrible being a girl--and it’s a million times
worse if you’re a--well, if you aren’t exactly revolting looking
and are what the dime novels call an heiress.”

“It must, indeed, be hard,” agreed young De Chartreuil consolingly.

Fair glanced at him suspiciously from the corner of her eye.

“You needn’t laugh, my dear boy--it most certainly is. I don’t
believe men care one little snip for your soul or--or your
intellect.”

“Oh, but surely!” protested De Chartreuil politely.

“No, sir,” maintained the complete cynic, giving another abstracted
hit at the ball. “Not a single, solitary one. Oh, bother--look
where it went then! How many strokes have you had? Four? _Four?_
I’ve had five, and look at the horrible thing now. What was I
talking about? Oh, proposals! I don’t believe in international
marriages, do you, Monsieur André?”

Monsieur André made a light and deprecating gesture. “I,
Mademoiselle? But I have had so few!”

“I do think foreigners are horribly frivolous!” murmured Fair to
the universe at large. “I’ve not had so many myself, but I can
still think they’re a bad idea. You couldn’t possibly help thinking
that they were pretty cold and calculating.”

“Could you not?” inquired one who had come very near being a cold
calculator in a freezing voice. “I, for one, try to look more
charitably on the pretty ladies who covet our poor coronets.”

Fair brushed this thrust aside with the obliviousness that made
her strength and her weakness once the engine of her attention
was racing along her one-track mind to the goal of her selection.
Humour, satire, impertinence, or indignation were signals
powerless to impede her progress when she was on her way; she
rushed by them heedlessly, recklessly indifferent to anything short
of a head-on collision.

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of the girls--who in the world wants a
little old coronet! Of course they’re nice if you’re _used_ to
them,” she added hastily. “But it was the men that I was thinking
of; you simply couldn’t be sure, not ever. You work, don’t you?”

“Alas, yes, Mademoiselle!” De Chartreuil abandoned resentment and
stood leaning on his mallet, laughing down at this incorrigible and
enchanting small barbarian.

“Monsieur André, why do you suppose that Monsieur de Lautrec
doesn’t work?”

“Philippe?” His voice was strange.

“Yes, Philippe--you didn’t suppose that I meant the Vicomte, did
you? This place keeps him busy from morning to night. Philippe,
of course.” Her voice was impatient, but there was a desperate
eagerness behind it that checked the quick words on De Chartreuil’s
tongue.

“Mademoiselle, for four years he worked day and night; he gave the
blood of his heart, the blood of his soul in work--would you grudge
him a little rest?”

“But, good heavens, he’s had years to rest,” cried Fair
despairingly. “He’s not going to rest until he dies, is he? You’re
not resting--Monsieur Raoul’s not resting--no one in the world has
a right to rest when there’s so much to do--no one!”

“For long, long after the war he did not leave the hospital,
Mademoiselle.”

“Well, wasn’t he resting there?” demanded his inquisitor fiercely.

“No,” replied the boy gravely. “No, he was not resting there, I
think.”

“What--what was the matter with him in the hospital?” asked Fair,
making her lips into a very straight line so that they wouldn’t
quiver.

“It was--what you call shell-shock.”

“Shell-shock? That’s horrible--oh, don’t I know! Those
hospitals--like a nightmare--worse than a nightmare----” She swept
it far from her with a resolute gesture. “It’s no good thinking
about it; you have to forget! And Heaven knows that he’s over it
now; Heaven knows that now he isn’t suffering from any breakdown.
I’ve never seen him look even serious for two minutes at a time--I
don’t believe that he has the faintest idea of what seriousness
means. It’s all very well to have a sense of humour; I have a
perfectly wonderful sense of humour myself when I’m not thinking
of something more important--but it’s ridiculous to think that
that’s all there is to it!” She hit the ball a reckless blow that
sent it flying far across the tawny meadow, and turned to young
De Chartreuil a lovely little countenance on fire with righteous
indignation and angry distress. “A real man would know that life
ought to be more than just laughing half the day--and singing half
the night--and looking the way the heroes in the moving pictures
ought to look--and chatter-boxing away in his room for hours and
hours and hours!” Bitter resentment at this unpalatable memory sent
the colour flying higher in her cheeks, and she swung off after the
red ball at a furious scamper. “And by Glory, I’m going to tell him
so!” she announced tempestuously over her shoulder to the astounded
André. He sprang forward, galvanized into instant action.

“Mademoiselle--Mademoiselle, wait, I beg you. You jest, of course,
but----”

“Indeed I do not jest, of course,” retorted Fair hotly. “I don’t
jest one little bit. Why in the world shouldn’t I tell him?”

“There are, I should think, one thousand reasons why,” he replied
sharply. “Must I give you the thousand and first, and assure you
that always, always, all the days that you live, it would be to you
a very deep regret?”

“It certainly would not,” replied his unimpressed audience flatly.
Any one who attempted to frighten Fair out of any undertaking
whatever was making a vital strategic error, but André de
Chartreuil was too young and too thoroughly outraged to indulge in
strategy.

“Mademoiselle, but this is madness----”

“Monsieur, but this is impertinence.” Fair’s chin was tilted
at an angle that implied that battle, murder, and sudden death
would be child’s play to her from then on. This--this little
_whipper-snapper_ of a French infant who had basely pretended to be
at her feet, suddenly rising up and dictating a course of conduct
to her--to _her_! Well, it simply proved what she had always
maintained. You couldn’t trust a foreigner--you couldn’t, not ever.

“For what you call impertinence, forgive me.” The tone was far from
repentant, and Fair waited stiffly for further developments. “My
poor English renders me clumsy--grant me, I pray, patience.”

Very poor English, thought Fair sternly; it might mean anything.
Grant him patience indeed! She had precious little patience to
spare for any one this morning, as he would discover to his cost.

“Philippe, he is like no one else!” Young De Chartreuil made a
gesture of impotent despair, his careful English suddenly turned
traitor. “You do not see it, but he is like no one else, I tell
you. I who was his sous-officier--his how you call it, his
under-officer--ah, no matter--he was my captain for three years,
and I know, you hear me, I know.”

“Heaven knows I hear you,” Fair assured him with ominous calm. “I
should think that they could hear you in Paris!”

“Well, then, I tell you that we, his men, we who followed him, we
would have given the blood out of our hearts for him to shine his
boots with--we knew him, we. You know why they call him Philippe le
Gai?”

“I know that there’s some story about an old troubadour called
Philippe le Gai----”

“About a very great soldier who was also a very great singer,
Mademoiselle, long years ago in Provence. Philippe is of his race;
one of those who meet Death itself with a song. That other Philippe
died eight hundred years ago, and they say that he died singing.
And we--we who followed this Philippe and gave to him our souls--we
know that he could face worse than death--and still sing.”

“There isn’t the slightest necessity of making a curtain speech
to me about courage,” replied the last of the fighting Carters,
and the velvet voice rang as cold and hard as drawn steel. “I know
quite a good deal about it, thank you. I may not have had any old
ancestor that went rampaging around singing songs about how gay
and brave and wonderful he was, but I had three great-uncles and
a grandfather who were killed in the Civil War and a brother who
was killed in the Spanish War, and--and a father----” Her voice
failed her, but she swallowed hard and pushed on relentlessly:
“And a father who died for his country just as much as any of
them, because he went right on working for it when he _knew_
that it would kill him--and who didn’t even let me know that he
was dying, because I couldn’t help him, and he thought that I
might help America, and I was the only one of the Carters left to
fight for America. And I kept on fighting, even though it just
about killed me, too; I went into Germany with my men, because I
knew that he wouldn’t think the war was over until we got what
we fought for--until we _really_ got it--and I’d be there yet if
it hadn’t been for those idiotic doctors. Nervous breakdown! For
gracious sakes, I’d like to hear what they’d say if one of their
old colonels started to have a nervous breakdown. This isn’t any
kind of a world to sit and twirl your thumbs and pet your nerves
in--and I can’t see that singing about it makes it much nobler--or
laughing, either.”

“There are many things, perhaps, that you cannot see,” commented
young De Chartreuil, and at the tone in his voice there was one
thing that Fair did see, and that was red.

“Well, I can see this,” she cried in a voice shaken with sheer
fury, “I can see that it’s possible to be just as much of a slacker
after the war as during it.”

“Mademoiselle!”

“In America men _work_,” stormed Fair. “They----”

“In America you save your generosity for your own faults, it
seems.” He raised a commanding hand, and Fair stood voiceless,
literally transfixed with rage. “No, wait, I beg you; I have not
yet finished. Perhaps in your great country you forget that work
is the means--that it is not the end; no, no, believe me, it is
not the end. It is also not very wise to condemn utterly that
which may differ only in kind, not in degree. To you courage may
be a dark and stern thing--a duty--but to some--to one at least,
Mademoiselle--it is a shining and gay and splendid gift; it is a
joy.”

“Are you through with your lessons for the day?” asked Fair icily.
“Because if you are, I’m going!” She whirled the red mallet about
her head like a battle-axe, and sent it spinning far from her after
the neglected ball. “Good-bye--I’m off. Tell the others I twisted
my ankle--got a headache--tell them any old lie you think of----”

“But, Mademoiselle, you cannot----”

Fairfax Carter halted for a moment in her tumultuous progress,
the wind whipping her leaf-brown skirts about her and sending the
bright curls flying about the reckless, stubborn little face.

“Can’t I?” she called back defiantly. “Can’t I? Well, wait and see!
I’m going to tell your precious Philippe de Lautrec just exactly
what I think of a hero who spends his life resting on his laurels
while his sisters work their fingers to the bone--and you and Foch
and the Archangel Gabriel can’t stop me, so I’d advise you to stick
to croquo-golf. Good-bye!”

She was gone in a brilliant whirl of flying skirts and scarf
and hair. Young De Chartreuil watched her disappearing down the
long hill that led past Daudin’s farm to the far gate of the
château with an expression in which dismay was tempered by a grim
satisfaction. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders briefly,
retrieved the scarlet ball and mallet, and set off slowly toward
the sounds of distant laughter that marked the other players. Well,
let her go; she was richly in need of a lesson, that lovely little
demon! And to think that for a moment he had dreamed--ah, name of
Heaven, what an escape!----

Fair, in the meantime, raced lightly on her chosen way. She was in
a towering rage at De Chartreuil for his presumptuous insolence,
and in an even more towering rage at herself for the effect that it
had had on her. Even immature reflection revealed the unmistakable
fact that she had behaved a good deal more like a fish-wife than
the traditional great lady. About the only things that she had
failed to do were boxing his ears and screaming at the top of her
lungs. And she had felt terribly--oh, but terribly--like doing
both of them. No, it was all very well to have a temper, but it
was a bad strategic error to lose it. Possession is nine points
of the law, especially with tempers. Fortunately, the hateful De
Chartreuil child had been even worse than she. He had looked at
one time as though it would have been pure ecstasy to throttle the
life out of her--the time that she had got in that neat thrust
about peace-time slackers. Well, she was on her way to tell one of
them exactly what she thought of him as fast as her stubby brown
boots would carry her. She wrenched impatiently at the iron latch
on the great north gate--it yielded with an unexpectedness that
nearly threw her off her feet, and she heard it clang to behind
her as she raced up the long alley of lime trees that led to the
stone terrace. If she were lucky, she might find the object of her
righteous wrath basking there in the sunlight, without so much as
a book in his graceless hands, dreaming away the hours, his dark
face turned to the golden fields of his inheritance. She had found
him there before--and, yes, fate was with her--there he was now in
his great chair with his back to the lime trees, lounging deep. For
a moment she hesitated, her heart thundering in her ears, and then
she swung recklessly across the sun-warmed flags, hands deep in her
pockets, her chin tilted at an outrageous angle.

“Oh, there you are!” she hailed in her magic voice, but there was
something behind the words that turned them from a salutation to a
challenge.

Philippe le Gai sat quite still for a moment, and then, without
rising, he flung her a radiant smile over his shoulder.

“And there are you!” he said. “All finished, the croquo-golf?”

“No--just finished for me. It’s a stupid game, don’t you think?”

“Me? I think no game stupid that once I have started--no, not one.
Then I must play it through to the end, or count myself defeated!”

Fair’s eyes darkened ominously.

“But you don’t start many games, do you?” she asked.

“No,” acquiesced the young man in the chair. “As you say, not
many.”

Fair set her teeth. Did he think that if he continued to sprawl
all his splendid length there, unmoving, that she would pass on?
Was this his method of once more conveying to her the information
that her presence was an intrusion? Oh, for a man--for some slim,
freckled, young American--to take this insolent foreigner by his
coat collar and jerk him to his unworthy feet! Perhaps it might be
better to have two of them--he was disgustingly tall. She swung
round the corner of the chair, flames dancing in her eyes.

“Are you--very busy?” she inquired in a dangerously polite little
voice.

Philippe le Gai showed all of his white teeth in another flashing
smile.

“But no!” he replied accurately, and made a swift motion as though
to rise, only to check himself more swiftly. “Be seated, I pray
you!”

The look of consuming rage that Fair flashed on him as she seated
herself in the small iron chair opposite him would have shrivelled
a normally sensitive soul to gray ashes. Her impervious host,
however, merely leaned deeper into his bright cushions, the smile
still edging his lips.

“Laure still plays?”

“Yes,” replied Fair. She spoke with considerable difficulty; the
royal condescension of that “Be seated” had left her feeling
slightly dizzy.

“I have here a paper which will need her sharp wits--she will not
be long, perhaps?”

“I don’t know,” replied Fair sombrely. Just how, she wondered, did
you lead up to telling a comparative stranger that you despised
him? It was harder than she had thought it would be, out there
in the meadow--it was the proud turn of the black head, and the
sure strength of the long brown hands, and the sheer beauty of the
flashing smile that made it hard. No one had a right to look like
that--and to be despicable. It wasn’t fair.

“I think that those poor Gods in Heaven must envy us our earth
to-day!” said the object of her scorn, turning his face to the deep
blue of the autumn sky. “So warm, so cold, so sweet--like some mad
Bacchante, bare of throat and arm for all her warm fur skins, with
grapes of purple weighing down her curls, and wine of gold tripping
up her light heels.... Once, you know, when I was the smallest of
little boys, Monsieur my grandfather call me to come down from my
sleep to drink the health of my very new sister--of young Laure.
There was a great banquet, a table brave with fruit and flowers
and lace and candles, and they put me onto that table, and give
me a little burning golden brandy to drink in a great cool glass
of crystal--and straight to my head it flew--ah, Dieu, the lucky,
curly head! I remember still, you see--I remember how the world
must feel to-day. The world and I, we have been fortunate.”

Fair’s mouth was a rose-red line of stern distaste. It might be all
very French to take a perfectly good autumn day and turn it into an
intoxicated heathen, but in her opinion, which was far from humble,
it was simply outrageous. And those detestable people, giving
brandy to that darling little boy--well, all little boys were more
or less darling. It was their truly lamentable degeneration at
about the age of twenty-nine that was occupying her at present. She
leaned forward swiftly, her hands very cold and her eyes very hot.

“Monsieur Philippe, don’t you ever, ever get tired of just sitting
around doing _nothing_?”

Perhaps the passion in the clear voice touched him--for a moment
Philippe le Gai belied his name. Then he made a slight gesture with
the hand that held the papers, a gesture of dismissal to such folly
as sober thought.

“Tired, Mistress Fairy? How should I be tired, doing nothing? And
how are you so sure that I do nothing while I sit around--how are
you so sure of that, I wonder?”

“Because I can see you,” replied Fair with despairing emphasis.

“Can you then, Wise Eyes? Can you see so well? Then you must see
that it is not nothing that I do.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” she whispered breathlessly, her heart in her voice.
“Isn’t it?”

“But never! While I sit around, I am being very, very busy,
me, being alive--and being amused--and being, believe me, most
eternally and most exultantly grateful. You call that doing
nothing?”

“Of course I call that doing nothing,” replied Fair fiercely.

“Now that is strange--because, you know, I am so busy doing it
that I can find time to do nothing else. To sit with the sun and
beauty and silence all about, that is better than heaven, I think.
Always I have loved Beauty better than life and once I thought that
I had lost her for ever--and, see, she is mine again! In other
fields--fields churned to madness, horrors of white clay and red
blood, with the proud trees stripped to dirty black stumps--in
other fields I remembered these, and I swore to that god of battles
that if he would send me back to this golden grace--to this
greenness and kind quiet--I would ask nothing more. And where those
stenches made the poor soul sicker than the body, I could sometimes
hold my breath, and smell apple-blossoms in the spring moonlight,
and yellow roses in the summer sunlight, and spiced wood burning
in the great chimneys, and cider blowing across the autumn winds.
Now--now I need not hold the breath to smell the good ripe fruit,
now I need not close my eyes to see my fields of gold, with the
little warm gray sheep against the hills. Now I have come home to
my fields, and I keep faith with the god of battles--I ask for
nothing more. Look before you, Wise Eyes; what do you see?”

“The alley of lime trees and the north gate and the meadow,” said
Fair, fighting to harden the voice that wanted only to break.

“Look farther----”

“I can see the thatch on Daudin’s roof and the road to the village
and the little steeple on the church.”

“Nothing more?”

“There’s nothing more to see.”

“You do not see a little boy climbing that iron gate and racing
home up that long alley, singing--racing quick, quick because it
begins to grow dark?”

“Of course I don’t see him,” replied Fair defiantly, but she leaned
forward, straining her eyes.

“Look farther--look far away; you cannot see the other little boys,
many, many, all hurrying while they sing to get home before it is
dark? No? Ah, poor Wise Eyes! Perhaps it is because it is years
that those little boys hurry down, instead of just an alley of lime
trees--they are hurrying home clean across the centuries. Since
that first Philippe came singing up from the south, they have loved
these gray stones best of all the earth--best, I think, of heaven.
And that last little boy, he did not love it least, believe me.
Perhaps he is singing louder than them all, because though they
have made it, those others, he has saved it.”

“He didn’t save it any more than a good many million other people,”
commented Fair ruthlessly.

Philippe le Gai threw back his black head with a ringing peal of
laughter. “Truly as you say, not more. But that is another reason
why he sings, believe me.”

“But what did you do before you started in to save it?” pursued the
remorseless inquisitor, and suddenly she sickened at her task. The
radiance flagged in the dark face before her; for a moment Philippe
le Gai looked mortally tired.

“Me? I was an artist--and an engineer.” He sat staring ahead of
him, tense and straight; and then he relaxed easily, the smile
playing again. “Not so good an artist, and not so bad an engineer.
I was oh, most young, and oh, most vain, and gray-headed old
gentlemen from far away came to beg a little advice as to what to
do with their sick mines.”

“Mines?” Fair’s face was alight. “That was what Dad used to do
before he went in for cotton. It was copper, you know. D’you know
about copper?”

“Every kind of mine that ever was I knew about,” he assured her
lightly. “But now I have forgotten.”

“How could you?” she cried. “How could you, when they need you so?
Don’t you think that that little boy would be ashamed if he could
see you sitting on this terrace--just sitting and sitting like a
great enormous lazy black cat? Don’t you?”

“Why, no,” replied Philippe le Gai. “No, I do not think that he
would be ashamed.”

Fair wrung her hands together; she felt defeat closing about her.

“Those fields that you talked about--don’t you want to make them
green and golden again, too?”

“They are very tired, those fields,” said the man. “Shall we not
let them rest?”

“Oh!” cried Fair, and the valiant voice struggled and broke. “Oh,
how can you--oh, oh, how can you?”

“Fair----”

He was on his feet at last--the swift move sent the paper flying,
and it came fluttering irresponsibly across the sunlit space
between them, dancing to a halt almost at her feet. It had blown
open, and her incredulous eyes were riveted on the letterhead--the
little thick black letters spelling out the name of Dad’s attorney,
Henry C. Forrester, Wall Street--she stared down blankly:

    Dear Sir--

    In further reply to your request for full details as to the
    fortune left Miss Carter by her father----

A wave of scarlet swept over her from heel to brow; she felt as
though she were drowning, she felt as though she were being buried
alive, she felt as though a bolt of lightning had passed clean
through her body, leaving her quite dead and still.

“So that’s what you are?” she said. “You--you! I might have known.”

“What I am?” His voice was touched with a little wonder. “No, but I
do not understand; what is it that I am?”

“There’s no word for you,” she told him between her clicking teeth.
She was shaking violently, uncontrollably, like someone in a chill.
“Crawling to my lawyers--you--you--a common adventurer----”

“You are mad,” he said.

“It’s here,” cried Fair. “Look. It’s here in black and white--are
you going to deny it?”

“Give me that letter,” said Philippe le Gai.

“I wouldn’t touch it in a thousand years,” she flung at him. “Not
in a hundred hundred thousand. It’s filthy--it can lie there till
it rots.”

“Pick it up,” he told her.

“How dare you?” she whispered. “How dare you?”

“It is not so very greatly daring,” he assured her. “Pick it up, I
tell you.”

Fair stared at him voicelessly where he stood, tall and splendid
and terrible in the sunlight. No, no, this was nightmare--this was
not real. It was not she who bent to the bidding of this relentless
monster--it was some other Fairfax caught in a hideous dream. The
paper rattled in her fingers like goblin castanets.

“Now bring it to me.”

She crossed the little space of sun-warmed bricks, her eyes fixed
and brilliant as a sleep-walker.

“Closer,” bade the still voice. “Closer yet. Yes. Now put it in
my hand. That way--yes. It was not yours, you see; did you forget
that?”

Fair made no answer. She stood frozen, watching the brown fingers
folding the bit of white paper into a neat oblong.

“I would not, I think, say any word to Laure of this,” said the
voice. “And I would not, I think, stay here longer. I would forget
all this, and go.”

“I am going this afternoon,” she told him through her stiff lips.
“And I am going to tell Laure--everything.”

“Do not,” he said. “Do not, believe me.” He stood staring down at
the paper, and then he spoke again.

“I am, as you say, an adventurer,” said Philippe le Gai, in that
terrible and gentle voice. “And adventure is, as you say, common.
For which I thank my gods. You have nothing more to say to me?”

“Nothing.”

“Then that is all, I think, Miss Carter.”

Obviously, the audience was over, the courtier was dismissed. Oh,
for one word--one little, little word--to blast him where he stood,
gentle and insolent and relentless. She could not find that word,
and she would die before she would give him any other. The brown
boots stumbled in their haste on the terrace steps; at the foot she
turned once more to face him, flinging him a last look of terror
and defiance and despair--and deeper than all, wonder. But Philippe
le Gai’s face was turned once more to his golden fields.

Far away, at the end of the long alley, she could see the players
coming back; she could hear them, too, laughing and calling to
each other--Bravo was barking frenziedly, heedless of Diane’s
small, peremptory shouts--there, he was off, with Raoul and Diane
in pursuit, headed straight for the distant stables. She clung to
the stone railing for a moment, limp and sick, and then she flung
back her head, spurred her flagging feet, and set off down the
arching lime trees, running. Running because she was desperately
tired and desperately frightened; because it was toward battle that
she ran, and she must get there swiftly. Laure hailed from the far
end.

“Ah, small deserter, you come to surrender? Come quick, then, and
do penance.”

“I’ve not come to do penance,” said the deserter. She stood very
straight with her hands clasped tightly behind her. “I’ve come to
say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” echoed Laure. “Here, André, take this mallet, this
ball. What folly is this, Fair?”

“It’s not folly; the folly’s been in staying. I’ve learned quite a
lot of things in the last few minutes, Laure. Monsieur de Lautrec
has some papers that he wants to show you.”

“Papers? Well, but what is all this mystery? Come, now, Fair,
you are not well, I know. The doctor he said you should not be
excited.”

“I am not in the least excited,” replied Fair, her eyes two
glittering danger signals. “Are you in this plot, too, Monsieur
André?”

“_Plot?_ No, decidedly, this is fever! Let me feel your hands, _mon
enfant_----”

“Don’t touch me, please,” said Fair, clearly and distinctly.

“Did I say fever? But it is delirium! I am not to touch you?”

“No.” She took a step farther away from Laure who stood looking
down at her, clear and quiet, with that incredulous lift to her
brows. “Don’t pretend any more, please; it makes me rather sick. I
know about everything, you see.”

“That is very exactly what I do not do, _ma petite_. No, André, do
not go--you, too, will wait and see. What is this nonsense, Fair?”

“You needn’t keep it up any longer, I tell you,” returned Fair
fiercely. “I’ve found out what you and Monsieur de Lautrec have
been doing. I thought that you loved me, Laure--you did it pretty
well--and all the time you were nothing but fortune hunters, were
you?”

“You told Philippe--that?” asked Laure. Every atom of colour had
drained out of her face, but she did not lift her voice. “No, wait,
André. I am not yet through. It would be a good hunter who could
find your fortune, Fairfax. You have none to hunt for.”

“I have two million dollars,” said Fair.

“You have not half a million centimes. It was all in cotton, that
great fortune; it is gone. Your lawyers had cabled to you while you
were ill in Germany, but the doctors they said you must not hear
that bad news then; they asked me to tell you, gently, when you
were much better. So I have waited, and Philippe, he has cabled
three--no, four times, to see whether skill and thought and work
might not save that so mighty fortune. To-day he thought perhaps
that we might have heard----”

“Oh,” said Fair in a small, childish voice. “Oh.” She put her hand
to her head; it hurt dreadfully. “Well, then, I can go to work----”
She made a vague gesture, as though if she stretched out her hand
work would be there for her to cling to--and Laure smiled, a fine,
cruel little smile. Something snapped in Fair’s head. “That sounds
ridiculous, doesn’t it, Laure? But you see, I’m not over six feet
tall, I’m not stronger than steel--I’m not busy twelve hours a day
sitting around in the sun being an ex-hero--so I’m going to work.”

“Did you, perhaps, tell my brother that you thought that of him,
too?” asked Laure.

“I told him that, and I told him more,” said Fair.

Laure came toward her, something so terrible in her white face that
for a moment Fair thought that she was going to kill her.

“Little fool!” she said very softly. “Little, wicked, wicked fool,
Philippe cannot work--Philippe is blind.”

“No!” cried Fair. She clapped her hands over her ears, to shut out
those dreadful words, her face a twisted mask of terror. “No, no,
no!”

“And I tell you yes, yes, yes,” repeated the tall girl before
her, closing her long fingers over the small wrists, wrenching
the clinging hands down relentlessly. “Blind like a stone, I tell
you--blind.”

“He couldn’t be--he couldn’t be--I’d have seen----”

“What have you ever seen that did not touch yourself?” asked
Philippe’s sister. “He is blind, but not so blind as you. When
you came to us, never, never did we think that you would not see,
though we could not talk of it--not yet. But Philippe--Philippe
he said: ‘No, no--let her alone. She has need of peace and mirth
and sunshine, those doctors said--darkness it must not touch her.
We will be careful, and perhaps she will not know.’ You have well
repaid that care, have you not, Fairfax?”

“But his eyes--his eyes----”

“His eyes--because they are still there, you think they see? They
saw too much, those eyes; they see no more. What made the light
behind them--that nerve behind them--it is paralyzed. You who
know so much about the war, you do not know that shock could do
that? That there are men blind because their eyes turned rebel,
and they would see no more horror--deaf because they would not
hear more horror--dumb because they could not tell their horror.
Philippe--Philippe he loved beauty--and after a long while his eyes
they went mad--and he is blind. Work--work, you little fool! All
day, all night, he works, he works. To learn to read--to learn to
write--to learn to live, to live, you hear----”

“Please let me go, Laure,” whispered Fair. “Please, Laure--please,
Laure.”

“I will tell Marie Léontine to help you with your packing,” said
Laure. “And I am glad indeed to let you go. Come, André.”

Fair watched them cutting across the garden to the east
entrance--not the terrace, not the terrace. She couldn’t run any
more--she felt as though she could never run again--but perhaps if
she started now and went very carefully, holding to the lime trees,
she could get there before he left. She must, she must get there
before he left.... Not until she was at the steps did she dare to
raise her eyes. He was still there.

“Laure?” he called. “Laure?”

“It’s Fair,” she said. “I came back.”

She saw him grind the paper between his hands--and then he turned
toward her, smiling a little.

“You had forgotten something?”

“Yes.” She was quite near now, but her voice was so low that it
barely reached him. “I came back to tell you--to tell you----”

The smile deepened on the dark young face. “Ah, _tiens_! There was
something, then, that you forgot to tell me? Never should I have
said it!”

“Please,” she entreated, in that shadow of a voice. “Please. I know
now about--about--Laure told me!”

“About why I lie like that cat in the sun? Good! Now you tell
Laure----” He broke off sharply. “She was not kind, our Laure? You
are weeping? Do not weep; those little jewels of tears, so small,
so shining, so empty, empty--you women love them best of all your
jewels, I think. But me, I do not think that they become you best!”

“I don’t cry often,” Fair told him. “Not often, really. You can ask
Dad--no, no--not Dad. It’s because I’m tired, probably. I came back
because I wanted to tell you----” She swallowed despairingly, the
tears salt on her lips.

“Why, because you were a good child,” he helped her gaily. “And
wanted to tell me that you were sorry.”

“No--no. Because I wanted to tell you that I was glad.”

“_Glad?_” He was on his feet, with that cry.

“How could I be sorry for you, Philippe? Oh, I can’t be sorry for
myself--not even now--not now, when I see myself. I wanted so to be
proud of you--you don’t know--you don’t--you don’t----”

“And why did you so want to be proud of me, may I ask?”

“Because I love you,” said Fair clearly.

Philippe le Gai caught at the cushioned chair. “You are mad,” he
said.

“Yes.” The voice tripped in its haste. “Yes, but you see I had
to tell you. You mustn’t mind; I’m going this afternoon--Marie
Léontine’s waiting now. Don’t mind, please, Philippe; I didn’t
know, myself, truly--not till Laure told me about--about you, and
I knew that I didn’t care at all how horrible and vile I had been,
because I was so glad that you--that you----”

“Hush!” He stood quite still, and then he raised his hand to his
eyes. “I should send you far from me, Fairfax.”

“Yes,” said Fair, “I’m not any good, you see. All I had to give you
was my money and my--my prettiness. I can’t give you either of
them, Philippe.”

“When I heard you laugh, that first night when you came,” he told
her, “I remembered--I remembered that laughter was not just a sound
to cover up despair--I remembered how to laugh that night.”

She stared at him, voiceless.

“When you spoke to me--when you spoke to me, my Music--I was glad
then that I could not see, because I wished to listen only, always.”

“Philippe,” she prayed. “Don’t, don’t send me away, Philippe.”

“We are mad,” he said. “Come closer.”

And once more she went toward him across that sunlit space, to
where he stood, tall and splendid and terrible. “Closer still,” he
said. “Closer still--still closer. Why do you weep, my Laughter?”

“Hold me--hold me--don’t let me go.”

“Blindness,” he said. “It is just a little word, a little, dark,
ugly word to frighten foolish children. Are you beautiful, my
Loveliness? Never, never could you be beautiful as I dream you!” He
touched her lips with his brown fingers.

“Smile!” he said. And she smiled.

“What is blindness to me who can touch your lips to laughter?” he
asked her, bending his black head until his lips swept her lashes.
“What is blindness to me, who can touch your eyes to tears?”

The sunlight fell across the bright hair of the last of the
fighting Carters--he could feel it warm against his lips and
suddenly he laughed aloud.

“What is blindness to me?” cried Philippe le Gai to the golden sun.
“What is blindness to me, who hold my light against my heart?”




GREEN GARDENS


Daphne was singing to herself when she came through the painted
gate in the back wall. She was singing partly because it was June,
and Devon, and she was seventeen, and partly because she had
caught a breath-taking glimpse of herself in the long mirror as
she had flashed through the hall at home, and it seemed almost too
good to be true that the radiant small person in the green muslin
frock with the wreath of golden hair bound about her head and the
sea-blue eyes laughing back at her was really Miss Daphne Chiltern.
Incredible, incredible luck to look like that, half Dryad, half
Kate Greenaway--she danced down the turf path to the herb garden,
swinging her great wicker basket and singing like a mad thing.

“He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon,” carolled Daphne, all
her ribbons flying,

    “He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon,
     He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon
     To tie up----”

The song stopped as abruptly as though someone had struck it from
her lips. A strange man was kneeling by the beehive in the herb
garden. He was looking at her over his shoulder, at once startled
and amused, and she saw that he was wearing a rather shabby tweed
suit and that his face was brown against his close-cropped tawny
hair. He smiled, his teeth a strong flash of white.

“Hello!” he greeted her, in a tone at once casual and friendly.

Daphne returned the smile uncertainly. “Hello,” she replied gravely.

The strange man rose easily to his feet, and she saw that he was
very tall and carried his head rather splendidly, like the young
bronze Greek in Uncle Roland’s study at home. But his eyes--his
eyes were strange--quite dark and burned out. The rest of him
looked young and vivid and adventurous, but his eyes looked as
though the adventure were over, though they were still questing.

“Were you looking for any one?” she asked, and the man shook his
head, laughing.

“No one in particular, unless it was you.”

Daphne’s soft brow darkened. “It couldn’t possibly have been me,”
she said in a stately small voice, “because, you see, I don’t know
you. Perhaps you didn’t know that there is no one living in Green
Gardens now?”

“Oh, yes, I knew. The Fanes have left for Ceylon, haven’t they?”

“Sir Harry left two weeks ago, because he had to see the old
governor before he sailed, but Lady Audrey only left last week. She
had to close the London house, too, so there was a great deal to
do.”

“I see. And so Green Gardens is deserted?”

“It is sold,” said Daphne, with a small quaver in her voice, “just
this afternoon. I came over to say good-bye to it, and to get some
mint and lavender from the garden.”

“Sold?” repeated the man, and there was an agony of incredulity in
the stunned whisper. He flung out his arm against the sun-warmed
bricks of the high wall as though to hold off some invader. “No,
no; they’d never dare to sell it.”

“I’m glad you mind so much,” said Daphne. “It’s strange that nobody
minds but us, isn’t it? I cried at first--and then I thought that
it would be happier if it wasn’t lonely and empty, poor dear--and
then, it was such a beautiful day, that I forgot to be unhappy.”

The man bestowed a wrenched smile on her. “You hardly conveyed the
impression of unrelieved gloom as you came around that corner,” he
assured her.

“I--I haven’t a very good memory for being unhappy,” Daphne
confessed remorsefully, a guilty rose staining her to her brow at
the memory of that exultant chant.

He threw back his head with a sudden shout of laughter.

“These are glad tidings! I’d rather find a pagan than a Puritan at
Green Gardens any day. Let’s both have a poor memory. Do you mind
if I smoke?”

“No,” she replied, “but do you mind if I ask you what you are doing
here?”

“Not a bit.” He lit the stubby brown pipe, curving his hand
dexterously to shelter it from the little breeze. He had the most
beautiful hands that she had ever seen, slim and brown and fine;
they looked as though they would be miraculously strong--and
miraculously gentle. “I came to see whether there was ‘honey still
for tea,’ Mistress Dryad!”

“Honey--for tea?” she echoed wonderingly. “Was that why you were
looking at the hive?”

He puffed meditatively. “Well--partly. It’s a quotation from a
poem. Ever read Rupert Brooke?”

“Oh, yes, yes.” Her voice tripped in its eagerness. “I know one by
heart--

   “‘If I should die think only this of me:
     That there’s some corner of a foreign field
     That is for ever England. That shall be----’”

He cut in on the magical little voice roughly.

“Ah, what damned nonsense! Do you suppose he’s happy, in his
foreign field, that golden lover? Why shouldn’t even the dead be
homesick? No, no--he was sick for home in Germany when he wrote
that poem of mine--he’s sicker for it in Heaven, I’ll warrant.”
He pulled himself up swiftly at the look of amazement in Daphne’s
eyes. “I’ve clean forgotten my manners,” he confessed ruefully.
“No, don’t get that flying look in your eyes; I swear that I’ll be
good. It’s a long time--it’s a long time since I’ve talked to any
one who needed gentleness. If you knew what need I had of it, you’d
stay a little while, I think.”

“Of course I’ll stay,” she said. “I’d love to, if you want me to.”

“I want you to more than I’ve ever wanted anything that I can
remember.” His tone was so matter-of-fact that Daphne thought that
she must have imagined the words. “Now, can’t we make ourselves
comfortable for a little while? I’d feel safer if you weren’t
standing there ready for instant flight! Here’s a nice bit of
grass--and the wall for a back----”

Daphne glanced anxiously at the green muslin frock. “It’s--it’s
pretty hard to be comfortable without cushions,” she submitted
diffidently.

The man yielded again to laughter. “Are even Dryads afraid to
spoil their frocks? Cushions it shall be. There are some extra ones
in the chest in the East Indian room, aren’t there?”

Daphne let the basket slip through her fingers, her eyes black
through sheer surprise.

“But how did you know--how did you know about the lacquer chest?”
she whispered breathlessly.

“Oh, devil take me for a blundering ass!” He stood considering
her forlornly for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders, with
the brilliant and disarming smile. “The game’s up, thanks to my
inspired lunacy! But I’m going to trust you not to say that you’ve
seen me. I know about the lacquer chest because I always kept my
marbles there.”

“Are you Stephen Fane?”

At the awed whisper the man bowed low, all mocking grace, his hand
on his heart, the sun burnishing his tawny head.

“Oh-h!” breathed Daphne. She bent to pick up the wicker basket, her
small face white and hard.

“Wait!” said Stephen Fane. His face was white and hard, too. “You
are right to go--entirely, absolutely right--but I am going to beg
you to stay. I don’t know what you’ve heard about me; however vile
it is, it’s less than the truth----”

“I have heard nothing of you,” said Daphne, holding her
gold-wreathed head high, “but five years ago I was not allowed to
come to Green Gardens for weeks because I mentioned your name. I
was told that it was not a name to pass decent lips.”

Something terrible leaped in those burned-out eyes, and died.

“I had not thought they would use their hate to lash a child,” he
said. “They were quite right--and you, too. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” replied Daphne clearly. She started down the path,
but at its bend she turned to look back--because she was seventeen,
and it was June, and she remembered his laughter. He was standing
quite still by the golden straw beehive, but he had thrown one arm
across his eyes, as though to shut out some intolerable sight. And
then, with a soft little rush, she was standing beside him.

“How--how do we get the cushions?” she demanded breathlessly.

Stephen Fane dropped his arm, and Daphne drew back a little at the
sudden blaze of wonder in his face.

“Oh,” he whispered voicelessly. “Oh, you Loveliness!” He took a
step toward her, and then stood still, clinching his brown hands.
Then he thrust them deep in his pockets, standing very straight.
“I do think,” he said carefully, “I do think you had better go.
The fact that I have tried to make you stay simply proves the
particular type of rotter that I am. Good-bye--I’ll never forget
that you came back.”

“I am not going,” said Daphne sternly. “Not if you beg me. Because
you need me. And no matter how many wicked things you have done,
there can’t be anything as wicked as going away when someone needs
you. How do we get the cushions?”

“Oh, my wise Dryad!” His voice broke on laughter, but Daphne saw
that his lashes were suddenly bright with tears. “Stay, then--why,
even I cannot harm you. God himself can’t grudge me this little
space of wonder: He knows how far I’ve come for it--how I’ve fought
and struggled and ached to win it--how in dirty lands and dirty
places I’ve dreamed of summer twilight in a still garden--and
England!”

“Didn’t you dream of me?” asked Daphne wistfully, with a little
catch of reproach.

He laughed again unsteadily. “Why, who could ever dream of you, my
Wonder? You are a thousand thousand dreams come true.”

Daphne bestowed on him a tremulous and radiant smile. “Please let
us get the cushions. I think I am a little tired.”

“And I am a graceless fool! There used to be a pane of glass cut
out in one of the south casement windows. Shall we try that?”

“Please, yes. How did you find it, Stephen?” She saw again that
thrill of wonder on his face, but his voice was quite steady.

“I didn’t find it; I did it! It was uncommonly useful, getting in
that way sometimes, I can tell you. And, by the Lord Harry, here
it is. Wait a minute, Loveliness; I’ll get through and open the
south door for you--no chance that way of spoiling the frock.”
He swung himself up with the sure grace of a cat, smiled at
her--vanished--it was hardly a minute later that she heard the
bolts dragging back in the south door, and he flung it wide.

The sunlight streamed in through the deep hall and stretched
hesitant fingers into the dusty quiet of the great East Indian
room, gilding the soft tones of the faded chintz, touching very
gently the polished furniture and the dim prints on the walls. He
swung across the threshold without a word, Daphne tiptoeing behind
him.

“How still it is,” he said in a hushed voice. “How sweet it smells!”

“It’s the potpourri in the Canton jars,” she told him shyly. “I
always made it every summer for Lady Audrey; she thought I did it
better than any one else. I think so, too.” She flushed at the
mirth in his eyes, but held her ground sturdily. “Flowers are
sweeter for you if you love them--even dead ones,” she explained
bravely.

“They would be dead, indeed, if they were not sweet for you.” Her
cheeks burned bright at the low intensity of his voice, but he
turned suddenly away. “Oh, there she sails--there she sails still,
my beauty. Isn’t she the proud one, though--straight into the
wind!” He hung over the little ship model, thrilled as any child.
“_The Flying Lady_; see where it’s painted on her? Grandfather
gave it to me when I was seven--he had it from his father when he
was six. Lord, how proud I was!” He stood back to see it better,
frowning a little. “One of those ropes is wrong; any fool could
tell that.” His hands hovered over it for a moment--dropped.
“No matter--the new owners are probably not seafarers! The
lacquer chest is at the far end, isn’t it? Yes, here. Are three
enough--four? We’re off!” But still he lingered, sweeping the great
room with his dark eyes. “It’s full of all kinds of junk; they
never liked it--no period, you see. I had the run of it--I loved
it as though it were alive; it was alive for me. From Elizabeth’s
day down, all the family adventurers brought their treasures
here--beaten gold and hammered silver, mother-of-pearl and peacock
feathers, strange woods and stranger spices, porcelains and
embroideries and blown glass. There was always an adventurer
somewhere in each generation--and however far he wandered, he came
back to Green Gardens to bring his treasures home. When I was a
yellow-headed imp of Satan, hiding my marbles in the lacquer chest,
I used to swear that when I grew up I would bring home the finest
treasure of all, if I had to search the world from end to end. And
now the last adventurer has come home to Green Gardens--and he has
searched the world from end to end--and he is empty-handed.”

“No, no,” whispered Daphne. “He has brought home the greatest
treasure of all, that adventurer. He has brought home the beaten
gold of his love and the hammered silver of his dreams--and he has
brought them from very far.”

“He had brought greater treasures than those to you, lucky room,”
said the last of the adventurers. “You can never be sad again;
you will always be gay and proud--because for just one moment he
brought you the gold of her hair and the silver of her voice.”

“He is talking great nonsense, room,” said a very small voice, “but
it is beautiful nonsense, and I am a wicked girl, and I hope that
he will talk some more. And please, I think we will go into the
garden and see.”

All the way back down the flagged path to the herb garden they were
quiet; even after he had arranged the cushions against the rose-red
wall, even after he had stretched out at full length beside her and
lighted another pipe.

After a while he said, staring at the straw hive: “There used to be
a jolly little fat brown one that was a great pal of mine. How long
do bees live?”

“I don’t know,” she answered vaguely, and after a long pause, full
of quiet, pleasant odours from the herb garden, and the happy
noises of small things tucking themselves away for the night, and
the faint drift of tobacco smoke, she asked: “What was it about
‘honey still for tea’?”

“Oh, that!” He raised himself on one elbow so that he could see her
better. “It was a poem I came across while I was in East Africa;
someone sent a copy of Rupert Brooke’s things to a chap out there,
and this one fastened itself around me like a vise. It starts where
he’s sitting in a café in Berlin with a lot of German Jews around
him, swallowing down their beer; and suddenly he remembers. All the
lost, unforgettable beauty comes back to him in that dirty place;
it gets him by the throat. It got me, too.

   “‘Ah, God! to see the branches stir
     Across the moon at Grantchester!
     To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
     Unforgettable, unforgotten
     River-smell, and hear the breeze
     Sobbing in the little trees....
     Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
     Gentle and brown, above the pool?
     And laughs the immortal river still
     Under the mill, under the mill?
     Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
     And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
     Deep meadows yet, for to forget
     The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh, yet
     Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
     And is there honey still for tea?’”

“That’s beautiful,” she said, “but it hurts.”

“Thank God you’ll never know how it hurts, little Golden Heart in
quiet gardens. But for some of us, caught like rats in the trap of
the ugly fever we called living, it was black torture, and yet our
dear delight to remember the deep meadows we had lost--to wonder if
there was honey still for tea.”

“Stephen, won’t you tell me about it--won’t that help?”

And suddenly someone else looked at her through those haunted
eyes--a little boy, terrified and forsaken. “Oh, I have no right to
soil you with it. But I came back to tell someone about it; I had
to. I had to wait until Father and Audrey went away. I knew they’d
hate to see me--she was my step-mother, you know, and she always
loathed me, and he never cared. In East Africa I used to stay awake
at night thinking that I might die, and that no one in England
would ever care; no one would know how I had loved her. It was
worse than dying to think that.”

“But why couldn’t you come back to Green Gardens--why couldn’t you
make them see, Stephen?”

“Why, what was there to see? When they sent me down from Cambridge
for that dirty little affair, I was only nineteen--and they told
me I had disgraced my name and Green Gardens and my country--and I
went mad with pride and shame, and swore I’d drag their precious
name through the dirt of every country in the world. And I did--and
I did.”

His head was buried in his arms, but Daphne heard. It seemed
strange indeed to her that she felt no shrinking and no terror;
only great pity for what he had lost, great grief for what he might
have had. For a minute she forgot that she was Daphne, the heedless
and gay-hearted, and that he was a broken and an evil man. For a
minute he was a little lad, and she was his lost mother.

“Don’t mind, Stephen,” she whispered to him, “don’t mind. Now you
have come home; now it is all done with, that ugliness. Please,
please don’t mind.”

“No, no,” said the stricken voice, “you don’t know, you don’t know,
thank God. But I swear I’ve paid--I swear I have. When the others
used to take their dirty drugs to make them forget, they’d dream
of strange paradises, unknown heavens; but through the haze and
mist that they brought, I would remember--I would remember. The
filth and the vileness would fade and dissolve--and I would see
the sun-dial, with the roses on it, warm in the sun, and smell
the clove pinks in the kitchen border, and touch the cresses
by the brook, cool and green and wet. All the sullen drums and
whining flutes would sink to silence, and I would hear the little
yellow-headed cousin of the vicar singing in the twilight, singing.
‘Weep you no more, sad fountains’ and ‘Hark, hark, the lark.’ And
the painted yellow faces and the little wicked hands and perfumed
fans would vanish and I would see again the gay beauty of the lady
who hung above the mantel in the long drawing room, the lady who
laughed across the centuries in her white muslin frock, with eyes
that matched the blue ribbon in her wind-blown curls--the lady who
was as young and lovely as England, for all the years! Oh, I would
remember, I would remember! It was twilight, and I was hurrying
home through the dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell
ringing quietly somewhere, and a moth flying by brushed against my
face with velvet--and I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering
white, and see the first star swinging low above the trees, and
lower still, and brighter still, the lights of home.... And then
before my very eyes they would fade, they would fade, dimmer and
dimmer--they would flicker and go out, and I would be back again,
with tawdriness and shame and vileness fast about me; and I would
pay.”

“But now you have paid enough,” Daphne told him. “Oh, surely,
surely, you have paid enough. Now you have come home--now you can
forget.”

“No,” said Stephen Fane. “Now I must go.”

“Go?” At the startled echo he raised his head.

“What else?” he asked. “Did you think that I would stay?”

“But I do not want you to go.” Her lips were white, but she spoke
very clearly.

Stephen Fane never moved, but his eyes, dark and wondering, rested
on her like a caress.

“Oh, my little Loveliness, what dream is this?”

“You must not go away again; you must not.”

“I am baser than I thought,” he said, very low. “I have made you
pity me, I who forfeited your lovely pity this long time. It
cannot even touch me now. I have sat here like a dark Othello
telling tales to a small white Desdemona, and you, God help me,
have thought me tragic and abused. You shall not think that. In
a few minutes I will be gone; I’ll not have you waste a dream on
me. Listen; there is nothing vile that I’ve not done--nothing, do
you hear? Not clean sin, like murder; I’ve cheated at cards, and
played with loaded dice, and stolen the rings off the fingers of an
Argentine Jewess who----” His voice twisted and broke before the
lovely mercy in the frightened eyes that still met his so bravely.

“Why, Stephen?”

“So that I could buy my dreams. So that I could purchase peace
with little dabs of brown in a pipe-bowl, little puffs of white in
the palm of my hand, little drops of liquid on a ball of cotton.
So that I could drug myself with dirt--and forget the dirt and
remember England.”

He rose to his feet with that swift grace of his, and Daphne rose,
too, slowly.

“I am going now; will you walk to the gate with me?”

He matched his long step to hers, watching the troubled wonder on
her face intently.

“How old are you, my Dryad?”

“I am seventeen.”

“Seventeen! Oh, God be good to us, I had forgotten that one could
be seventeen. What’s that?”

He paused, suddenly alert, listening to a distant whistle, sweet on
the summer air.

“Oh, that--that is Robin.”

“Ah----” His smile flashed, tender and ironic. “And who is Robin?”

“He is--just Robin. He is down from Cambridge for a week, and I
told him that he might walk home with me.”

“Then I must be off quickly. Is he coming to this gate?”

“No, to the south one.”

“Listen to me, my Dryad--are you listening?” For her face was
turned away.

“Yes,” said Daphne.

“You are going to forget me, to forget this afternoon, to forget
everything but Robin whistling through the summer twilight.”

“No,” said Daphne.

“Yes; because you have a very poor memory about unhappy things!
You told me so. But just for a minute after I have gone you will
remember that now all is very well with me, because I have found
the deep meadows--and honey still for tea--and you. You are to
remember that for just one minute, will you? And now good-bye----”

She tried to say the words, but she could not. For a moment he
stood staring down at the white pathos of the small face, and then
he turned away. But when he came to the gate, he paused and put his
arms about the wall, as though he would never let it go, laying
his cheek against the sun-warmed bricks, his eyes fast closed. The
whistling came nearer, and he stirred, put his hand on the little
painted gate, vaulted across it lightly, and was gone. She turned
at Robin’s quick step on the walk.

“Ready, dear? What are you staring at?”

“Nothing. Robin, did you ever hear of Stephen Fane?”

He nodded grimly.

“Do you know--do you know what he is doing now?”

“Doing now?” He stared at her blankly. “What on earth do you
mean? He’s been dead for months; killed in the campaign in East
Africa--only decent thing he ever did in his life. Why?”

Daphne never stirred. She stood quite still, staring at the painted
gate. Then she said, very carefully: “Someone thought--someone
thought that they had seen him--quite lately.”

Robin laughed comfortingly. “No use looking so scared about it, my
blessed child. Perhaps they did. The War Office made all kinds of
ghastly blunders; it was a quick step from ‘missing in action’ to
‘killed.’ And he probably would have been jolly glad of a chance
to drop out quietly and have everyone think he was done for.”

Daphne never took her eyes from the gate. “Yes,” she said quietly,
“I suppose he would. Will you get my basket, Robin? I left it by
the beehive. There are some cushions that belong in the East Indian
room, too. The south door is open.”

When he had gone, she stood shaking for a moment, listening to
his footsteps die away, and then she flew to the gate, searching
the twilight desperately with straining eyes. There was no one
there--no one at all--but then the turn in the lane would have
hidden him by now. And suddenly terror fell from her like a cloak.

She turned swiftly to the brick wall, straining up, up on tiptoes,
to lay her cheek against its roughened surface, to touch it very
gently with her lips. She could hear Robin whistling down the
path, but she did not turn. She was bidding farewell to Green
Gardens--and the last adventurer.




DELILAH


“But what is she like?” asked O’Hara impatiently. “Man alive,
you’ve seen her, haven’t you? Sat next to her at dinner at the
Embassy last night, didn’t you? Well, then, for the love of the
Saints, what’s the creature like?”

De Nemours shrugged his shoulders, raising whimsical eyebrows at
the slim young giant towering above him.

“_Mon cher_, one cannot put the lady into two words. Voyons--she
is, as our Alfred so charmingly puts it, blonde like the wheat----”

“Oh, rot.” The ardent voice of the British representative was curt
to the point of rudeness, and De Nemour’s smile became exquisitely
courteous. “I don’t care whether she’s an albino. She’s the
American representative on this committee, and I’m interested in
her mental qualifications. Is she intelligent?”

“Intelligent! Ah, my poor friend, she is far, far worse.” His smile
grew reminiscent as he lit his cigarette. “She has a wit like a
shining sword, and eyelashes of a truly fantastic length.”

“And every time her eyes shine you think it’s the sword,” commented
O’Hara bitterly. “God, this is hideous! I can see her sitting there
chattering epigrams and fluttering dimples----”

“You do Mrs. Lindsay an injustice,” said another voice quietly, and
O’Hara swung around with a slight start.

“Oh, Celati, I clean forgot that you were there. I thought that you
had never met the lady.”

“Unfortunately for me, you are entirely correct. But last night
I came in after the dinner for some bridge, and I watched Mrs.
Lindsay with great interest, with great admiration, for more than
half an hour. There was a most fat Senator from the South talking
to her, and she was listening. I say _listening_, mark. In this
great country the most charming of women feel that they have
already acquired all desirable information and wisdom and that it
is their not unpainful function to disseminate it. I find that it
makes intercourse more exciting than flattering. But Mrs. Lindsay
was--listening.”

“You mean to say that she said nothing at all in half an hour?”
O’Hara’s tone was flatly incredulous.

“Oh, _si, si_, she spoke three times--and if one may judge by the
human countenance, I dare to wager that that most fat Senator
thought that never woman spoke more wittily or wisely.”

“And we are to have the jewels?”

“But surely. She said after the first ten minutes, ‘Oh, but do go
on!’ and after the next, ‘But what happened then?’ and after the
third ‘Good-night--and thank you.’ May I have a light, De Nemours?
Thanks!”

“And those--those are the epigrams?” O’Hara threw back his head and
laughed--a sudden boyish shout, oddly at variance with his stern
young face.

“Ah,” murmured Celati, a reminiscent and enigmatic smile touching
his lips, “you should have heard her voice!”

O’Hara’s smile vanished abruptly. He came perilously near scowling
as he stood staring down at the inscrutable Latin countenances
blandly presented for inspection. De Nemours permitted a flicker of
genial appreciation to warm his cold eyes, the tribute of a highly
distinguished connoisseur. Truly, this young Irishman, he was of
a magnificence. No collector of beauty in all its forms could
remain unmoved by the sight of that superb head--that more than
superb body. Praxiteles Hermes turned gypsy! One of those Celts
with obviously Spanish blood running hot and cold through their
veins. The cool appraisal hovered for the moment on the verge of
interest--flickered out. De Nemours was quite definitely convinced
that not one man in a thousand was deserving of interest, and he
had found little in an extremely varied experience to shake his
conclusions.

“An exquisite voice,” he agreed pleasantly. “It will turn our
dullest statistics to madrigals. The gods are merciful.”

O’Hara swung his chair to the table, protest bitter in his stormy
gray eyes and on his quick tongue. These damned foreigners!

“You don’t seem to grasp the situation. We are here to settle
matters of vital urgency, not to conduct a salon. Our reports on
the various insurgent activities throughout our countries are to
be test cases for the world. We’re not only to report conditions
but to suggest solutions. Think, man, think! This room may be the
laboratory where we will discover the formula to heal a world
that’s near to dying. Can you turn that into an epigram or a jest?”

“No,” said De Nemours softly, and he looked suddenly very tired and
very old, “that is no epigram, Monsieur O’Hara--that is no jest.
Ah, my country, my country.” His voice was hardly above a whisper,
but in the cold and bitter eyes there was something that wailed
aloud.

“Yes, my country,” O’Hara retorted fiercely, “but more than that.
There are five members of this Committee--not four.”

“Not four?” Celati’s level voice was suddenly sharp.

“Not four. There will be represented at this table Great Britain,
France, Italy, the United States--and Humanity. The greatest of
these, gentlemen, will have no voice.”

“_Au bonheur!_” commented De Nemours affably. “It, unlike Mrs.
Lindsay, might not sing us madrigals.”

O’Hara brought his clenched fist down on the table with a gesture
at once despairing and menacing. “Now by the Lord,” he said, his
voice oddly shaken, “if this woman----”

The door into the hall opened very quietly, closed more quietly
still, and Delilah Lindsay stood facing them, her hand still on the
knob.

“I knocked twice,” she said softly. “The woodwork must be very
thick.”

O’Hara rose slowly to his feet. Celati and De Nemours had already
found theirs.

“Good evening,” he said, “it’s not quite the hour, I believe.” He
was fighting an absurd and overwhelming impulse--an impulse to
reply with perfect candour, “The woodwork is not thick at all. Were
you listening at that door?”

For a moment, hardly longer, Delilah stood quite still. It was
long enough to stamp on every mind present an indelible picture
of the primrose-yellow head shining out against the dark panels;
therefore, long enough for all practical purposes. She released the
door-knob, smiling very faintly.

“It is unfortunate for a man to be late,” she replied, “but
unpardonable for a woman. We have so much time of our own to waste
that we must be very careful not to waste that of others. _Bon
soir_, De Nemours.”

She crossed the room with her light, unhurried tread, and stopped,
serenely gracious, before O’Hara.

“You are the British representative, are you not? It is very stupid
of me, but I don’t believe that I have heard your name.”

“You have heard it a good hundred times,” thought the British
representative grimly.

“Madame, permit that I present to you Mr. O’Hara.”

“Mr. O’Hara?” Her smile was suddenly as winningly mischievous as a
child’s. “That’s a grand name entirely for an Englishman.”

O’Hara’s eyes were ice gray. “I’m no Englishman, Mrs. Lindsay. But
some of us in Ireland hold still that we are part of Great Britain
though the Colonials may have seen fit to forget it.”

The velvety eyes lifted to his were warm with sympathy and concern.
“That’s splendid of you; we hear so much bitterness amongst the
Irish here, and somehow it seems--ugly. After all, as you say, no
matter what she may do--or has done--England is England! But I am
distressed to hear that there has been disloyalty elsewhere. You
think Canada--Australia?”

“I think neither. It was of other children of England that I was
thinking, Mrs. Lindsay--ungrateful and rebellious children.”

“Oh, how stupid. Egypt, of course, and India. But, after all, they
are only adopted children, aren’t they? Perhaps if we give them
time they’ll grow to be as loyal and steadfast and dependable as
you yourselves. _Pazienza_----”

“I was not----”

She raised a protesting hand, gay and imperious. “No, no, don’t
even bother to deny it. You must be discreet, I know--indeed,
indeed I honour you for it.” She turned to De Nemours, the
sparkling face suddenly grave. “But we must not be forgetting; we
are here to discuss more vital matters than England’s colonial
policy, vital as that may well be. Will you forgive us--and present
my colleague from Italy?”

“Mrs. Lindsay, Signor Celati.” Both De Nemours and Celati were
struggling with countenances not habitually slaves to mirth, but
the look of stony and incredulous amazement on O’Hara’s expressive
visage was enough to undermine the Sphinx.

By what miracle of dexterity had she turned the tables on him,
leaving him gracefully rebuked for triviality--he, the prophet and
crusader? And by what magic had she transformed his very palpable
hit at the recalcitrant Americans into a boomerang? He drew a long
breath. This woman--this woman was so unscrupulously clever that
she could afford to seem stupid. That rendered her pretty nearly
invulnerable. The stormy eyes grew still--narrowed intently--smiled.

“Mrs. Lindsay is entirely right,” he agreed. “Let us get to
business; Heaven knows that we have enough of it to get through!
Mrs. Lindsay, we have gone over a certain amount of ground in your
unavoidable absence. I regret----”

“I, too, regret it,” she said quietly. “But it is, as you say,
unavoidable. I was greatly honoured by the Government’s choice, but
it was impossible for me to drop the Oregon investigations at that
stage. If I could have the minutes of the previous meetings----”

“We have no minutes. It has been decided to dispense with the
services of a stenographer, as the matters handled are of really
incalculable delicacy. Each of us, however, keeps an abstract of
the proceedings, which we check up together, in order to prevent
any possible misunderstandings. These are at your disposal,
naturally.”

“I see. Then if it will not be too much trouble, I’ll run through
yours. It will only be necessary to see one lot, if they have been
checked, of course. Shall we begin where you left off, then? And
shall I take this chair? I’m quite ready. I left my hat and cloak
and such feminine trappings downstairs. What is under discussion?”

“I’ll have the report for you at the next meeting,” said O’Hara.
“We were thrashing out the situation in Rome. You think that the
Pope will influence the Blacks to vote against the commonist
element, Celati? That’s unusual, isn’t it? A distinct return to
temporal power?”

“Unusual, yes. A return to temporal power? Possibly. But the
Vatican contends that it is a spiritual and social matter rather
than a political matter. It seems----”

For a moment--for more than a moment O’Hara lost track of the
even, unemotional voice. He was watching, with a blazing and
concentrated curiosity, the face of the American representative.
Mrs. Lindsay was listening to the Italian with rapt interest, but
O’Hara could have sworn that it was the same interest, fascinated
and indulgent, which an intelligent small child bestows on a
grown-up telling fairy tales--an interest which whispers “It’s so
pretty--let’s pretend it’s true!” She looked almost like a small
child as she sat facing him across the darkly shining table; almost
like a small boy. Her thick, soft hair was cut short and framed
her face like a little mediæval page’s--straight across the low
white forehead, curling strongly under about her ears. The blue
jacket with its white Eton collar and narrow cuffs was boyish,
too. And the chin--O’Hara pulled himself up, frowning. He was mad!
His cousin Norah was boyish, if you like, with her honest freckled
face and puppy eyes, and red hands--but this small smooth creature
could clip her shining hair to its roots--it would only betray the
eternal feminine more damningly. No stiff collar would ever do
anything but accentuate the velvety darkness of her eyes, the pure
beauty of the wistful mouth. Possibly that was why she wore it! He
caught back a grim smile as the velvet eyes met his.

“It’s desperately awkward, of course,” said the voice that De
Nemours had accurately described as exquisite. “What solution would
you suggest, Mr. O’Hara?”

“I am not yet prepared to offer a solution,” Mr. O’Hara informed
her a trifle stiffly. What in the name of Gods and Devils had
Celati been talking about, anyway?

“But after all,” urged Mrs. Lindsay, “it comes down to a question
of two alternatives, doesn’t it? Which seems to you the lesser
evil?”

“I prefer to wait until we hear a little more about it.” His back
was against the wall, but he thoroughly intended to die fighting.

“More about it? What more is there to hear?” Her amazement was
so wide-eyed that it seemed almost impossible that it was not
genuine. But if you had put thumb-screws to him, O’Hara would have
maintained that in some inexplicable manner the small, demure,
deferential fiend across the table was fully aware of the fact
that he had not been listening--and fully prepared to make his
unsuspicious colleagues aware of it, too.

“Part of it did not seem quite clear to me,” he said curtly.

“Not clear?” repeated Celati, his imperturbable calm severely
ruffled, “what do you say, not clear? You find my English at fault,
possibly--certainly not my explanation. No child could do that.”

“Surely not,” agreed Mrs. Lindsay, and her voice was as soothing
as a cool hand, “I confess that it struck me as--well--limpid. But
perhaps Mr. O’Hara will tell us just what part of it he did not
follow?”

“Put it,” said O’Hara, with something perilously like hatred
blazing in his eyes, “that I did not follow. We are simply wasting
time. Will someone repeat the alternatives?”

Mrs. Lindsay’s gravely solicitous eyes met the look unflinchingly.
“Surely. All this is simply wasting time, as you say. It comes
down to a question as to whether it is preferable for the Italian
Government to countenance or discountenance the Papal entry into
politics. In the present case it is naturally an asset, but it is
possible that it might entail serious consequences. I put it baldly
and clumsily, but I am trying to be quite clear.”

“You are succeeding admirably,” O’Hara assured her. He was
dangerously angry, with the violent and sickening anger of a man
who had been made a fool of--and who has richly deserved it. “As
you say, it is--limpid. But why not a third alternative? Why should
the Italian Government do anything at all? Why not simply lie quiet
and play safe? It would not be for the first time.”

“Mr. O’Hara!” Celati was on his feet, white to the lips.

Mrs. Lindsay stretched out her hands with a prettily eloquent
gesture of despair. “Oh, really!” she said quietly. “Is this kind
of thing necessary? We are all working together for the same
purpose--a purpose that has surely too much dignity to be degraded
to such pettiness. Mr. O’Hara, I beg of you----”

“It is not necessary to beg of me.” He leaned across the table,
something boyish and winning in his face, his hand outstretched. “I
say, Celati, I’m no end of a bounder; do let me off this once--I’m
bone tired--haven’t slept for nights, trying to think of ways
through this beastly mess. I don’t know what I’m saying, and that’s
Heaven’s truth. Is it all right?”

“Quite. We are, I think, all tired.”

“Men,” Mrs. Lindsay murmured gently--“men are really wonderful.
What two women would have done that?”

O’Hara considered her for a moment in silence.

“Is that a tribute you are paying us?” he inquired quite as gently.

“Why, what else?” Again the soft amazement.

“I was seeking information. It struck me as ambiguous.”

Mrs. Lindsay smiled, that enigmatic smile, wistful and ironic. “It
is undue humility on your part, believe me. But shan’t we get back
to the matter in hand? Monsieur De Nemours, what is your opinion?”

“I think there is much in Mr. O’Hara’s suggestion that the
Government should not be over-precipitate,” replied De Nemours
pleasantly. He was horribly bored; politics, unless they concerned
France, bored him almost beyond endurance, but his ennui was
somewhat alleviated by the fact that a very pretty woman was asking
him a question. “If silence were maintained for a few weeks, it
might well be----”

O’Hara was listening--fiercely. He was sure that he could smell
violets somewhere; why didn’t the woman take her hands off the
table? They lay there, white and fragile and helpless, like broken
flowers. Why didn’t she wear a wedding ring? Why--he jerked his
tired mind back savagely to De Nemours’ easy, fluent voice,
his tired eyes to the worn but amiable mask that the Frenchman
substituted for a face. Why didn’t he stop talking?

“We, in France, have been learning tolerance to God as well as to
man,” he was saying. “Possibly before the war we have been drastic,
but the truly remarkable revival----”

France again! France and Italy and Oregon--on and on and on--the
clock on the mantel clicked away the minutes ruthlessly, the
precious minutes that belonged to a dying world. It was striking
eleven when Mrs. Lindsay rose.

“Then that’s cleared up, I think,” she said. “We begin the regular
routine to-morrow morning, don’t we? Half-past nine? And here?”

“The house has been placed at my disposal,” replied O’Hara
formally. “I have placed it at the Committee’s. It has proved a
convenient arrangement.”

“Are the night sessions usual?” she asked.

“Usual? I don’t know.” He looked at her wearily; how could any one
emerge from that harrowing bickering and manœuvering so fresh and
untouched and shining? “We have them when it seems necessary--how
often should you say, De Nemours?”

“Never mind.” The cool fingers were touching his; she was going. “I
will keep my evenings free, too--I was simply wondering what to do
about some invitations. But nothing else counts, of course, does
it? Do get a good rest; you look so tired. Good-night.” She smiled,
nodded the golden head graciously, and was gone.

O’Hara stood gazing blankly at the closed door for a moment--then
he swung across the room, flung the windows up with a carefully
controlled violence, and stood leaning heavily against its frame,
his shoulders sagging suddenly, his tired young face turned to the
stars.

“You find it too warm?” De Nemours inquired courteously.

“No--I don’t know. Those beastly violets----”

“Violets?” De Nemours waited with raised brows.

“The first time the poison gas came over at Ypres, the chap
standing next to me said, ‘Funny--there’s a jolly smell of violets
about.’ Violets--God!” His voice twisted--broke. But after a minute
he continued casually: “Rotten trick to have your senses go back on
you like that, what? They’re the little beggars Nature has given
us for guards and watchmen and here one of them turns traitor and
instead of shrieking ‘Careful--careful--the ugliest poison ever
found is touching you!’ it whispers ‘See, it smells of violets--oh,
England--oh, Spring.’ Damned traitors, the lot of them--for ever
telling us that poison is sweet!”

“Why, so it is,” murmured De Nemours. “Many and many a time. But
where were the violets to-night, _mon ami_?”

O’Hara jerked about incredulously, “What! you didn’t smell them?
Why, every time she moved the air was thick with them!”

“Ah, Youth!” Irony and regret tempered the low laughter. “One must
be young indeed to smell violets when a woman moves!”

Celati stirred slightly. “A most remarkable woman, this Mrs.
Lindsay.”

“Remarkable, indeed. There is something about her fine and
direct----”

O’Hara stared at him aghast. “Direct? Man, but you’re mad! The
woman’s tortuous as a winding lane--and it’s a dark place it leads
to, I’m thinking.”

De Nemours yielded once more to indulgent mirth, “_Pauvre ami_,
those nerves of yours play tricks with you! Mrs. Lindsay is a woman
with an exceptional mind of which she makes exceptional use. She is
a beautiful woman, but alas, she does not remind you of it. She is
entirely devoted to her work, she shows tact and courage, a rare
discretion, a fine simplicity----”

“Oh, God!” There was something very like despair in O’Hara’s mirth.
“Simplicity, by the Almighty! Because she wears blue serge instead
of white lace? Why, I tell you that she trails yards of chiffon
behind her when she goes, that her eyes are for ever smiling at you
over a scented fan, that there’s always a rose in her hair and a
kiss on her lips. She’s just as simple as Eve--and she still has
fast hold of the apple!”

Celati eyed him a trifle sternly. “You object to women in politics,
Mr. O’Hara?”

“Object? My soul, no! My mother and sister are in it up to their
eyebrows, and making a rattling good job of it, too. But when they
play the game, they play it. They leave more trappings than their
hats and cloaks downstairs; they let you forget that they are
women, and remember that they are human beings.”

“I find masculine women--distasteful.”

“I never said that they were masculine,” O’Hara retorted sharply,
“I said that they were first and foremost human beings. Any other
attitude is fatal. I tell you that this woman cares nothing in the
world for our game; she is playing her own. And she is playing with
loaded dice.”

“And what game is she playing, pray?”

“The oldest game in the world,” said O’Hara. “Antony’s dark-eyed
Egypt played it, and that slim witch, Mary Stuart, and the
milliner’s exquisite minx, Du Barry. Only they played behind silken
curtains, with little jewelled hands and heads and words. They
fight with other weapons nowadays, but the stakes haven’t changed
since Antony lost a world and won a kiss.”

“And the stakes?”

“Why, you are the Stake,” said O’Hara. “And I--and Celati there;
they are playing for Power--and Man is Power--and Man, poor fool,
is their toy. Little Sisters of Circe--they have come out from
behind their pale silken curtains and stripped the jewels from the
small hands and perfumed heads and covered their shining shoulders
with harsh stuffs and schooled their light tongues to strange
words--and we are blind and mad, and call them comrade!”

“_Tiens, tiens!_” murmured De Nemours, “you interest me, O’Hara. I
confess that I had failed to find this sinister glamour; but you
open pleasant vistas in a parched land!”

O’Hara gave him a wrenched smile. “That was not my endeavour,” he
said briefly.

Celati rose, a little stiffly. He was a heavy man, and oddly
deliberate for a Latin.

“It is late,” he said. “Are you coming, De Nemours? Till to-morrow
morning, Mr. O’Hara; _a rivederla_.”

“Good-night,” returned O’Hara. “At nine-thirty, then. Good-night.”

He stood staring down absently at the polished surface of the table
for a moment or so after the door had closed, and then crossed to
the open window. The stars were shining brightly--but they were
very far away and cold, the stars. There was something nearer and
sweeter in the quiet room behind him, nearer and sweeter even than
on that spring day at Ypres. He turned from the window with a
gesture at once violent and weary. Those accursed violets! He could
smell them still.


II

“You are taking Lilah Lindsay in to dinner,” said Mrs. Dane. “I am
kind to you, you see! She’s the most exquisite person.”

“Exquisite,” O’Hara agreed politely, but there was something in
his voice that caused Mrs. Dane to raise her beautifully pencilled
eyebrows. There was no doubt about it, her distinguished guest
was in no transport of enthusiasm as to her adored Lilah. Rumour,
for once, was correct! She glanced toward the door, bit her lip,
and then, with a swift movement of decision, she turned to the
high-backed sofa, her draperies fluttering about her as she seated
herself.

“I am so very glad that you came early,” she informed him
graciously, and O’Hara thought again of her astonishing resemblance
to a humming-bird--small and restless and vivid, eternally
vibrating over some new flower. “I so rarely get a chance to talk
to you--you are most impressively busy, aren’t you? Do you see a
great deal of Lilah?”

“Mrs. Lindsay has attended all our conferences for the past few
weeks.”

“Oh, of course, but you can hardly get to know her there, can you?”

“Possibly not. However, I have had to content myself with that.
She is a very busy woman, of course, and my own time is not at my
disposal.”

“I suppose not,” murmured Mrs. Dane mendaciously. She supposed
nothing of the sort. “But you are to be pitied, truly. She is a
most enchanting person; all the tragedy and cruelty of her life
have left her as gay and sweet and friendly as a child. It’s
incredible.”

“She has had tragedy and cruelty in her life?”

“Oh, it’s been a nightmare--nothing less. She hadn’t been out of
her French convent six months when she married that beast, Heaven
knows why--she had every other man in Washington at her feet, but
he apparently swept her off them! Of course, he had a brilliant
future before him----”

“Of course,” murmured O’Hara.

“What do you mean? Did you know Curran Lindsay?”

“Never heard of him,” O’Hara assured her. “But do go on: what
happened to the beast’s future?”

She shrugged her white shoulders distastefully. “Oh, he died in a
sanitarium in California several years ago, eaten up with drugs and
baffled ambition.”

“And languishing away without his favourite pastime of beating the
lovely Mrs. Lindsay black and blue, I suppose?”

Mrs. Dane controlled a tremor of annoyance. She disliked flippancy
and she disliked grimness; combined she found them irritating to a
really incredible degree. “Curran never subjected Lilah to physical
maltreatment,” she said coldly, “he subjected her to something a
thousand times more intolerable--his adoration.”

“So the beast adored her?”

“He was mad about her. You find that unlikely?”

“On the contrary,” replied O’Hara amiably, “I find it inevitable.
But what happened to his brilliant career?”

“Oh, he was crazily, insanely jealous--and some devil chose to
send him an anonymous letter in the middle of a crucial party
contest when his presence was absolutely vital, saying that Lilah
was carrying on an affair with an artist in California, where he’d
left her for the winter. He went raving mad--threw up the whole
thing--told his backers that they could go to Hell, he was going to
California--and he went, too.”

“Ah, Antony, Antony!” O’Hara said softly.

Mrs. Dane stared at him, wide-eyed. “Why, what do you mean? Have
you heard the story before?”

“It sounds, somehow, vaguely familiar,” he told her. “There was a
woman in Egypt--no--that was an older story than this. Well, what
did the beast find?”

“He found Lilah,” replied Mrs. Dane sharply. “The artist had
promptly blown his brains out when she had sent him about his
business, as she naturally did. But Curran’s contest was lost,
and so was Curran. He might as well have been Benedict Arnold,
from his party’s point of view. He went absolutely to pieces; took
to drinking more and more--then drugs--oh, the whole thing was a
nightmare!”

“And the artist blew his brains out, you say?”

“Yes, it was too tragic. Lilah was almost in despair, poor child.
He left some dreadful note saying that exiles from Paradise had no
other home than Hell--and that one of them was taking the shortest
cut to get there. The newspapers got hold of it and gave it the
most ghastly publicity,--you see, everyone had prophesied such
wonderful things about his future!”

“Still, he had dwelt in Paradise,” murmured O’Hara.

“Dwelt? Nonsense--he said that he was an exile!” Mrs. Dane’s voice
was distinctly sharp, but O’Hara smiled down at her imperturbably.

“Oh, come. It’s a little difficult to be exiled from a spot where
you’ve never set foot, isn’t it? No, I rather fancy that Mrs.
Lindsay found consolation in the dark hours by remembering that
she had not always been unkind to the poor exile--that in Paradise
for a time there had been moonlight and starlight and sunlight--and
that other light that never was, on sea or land. It must have
helped her to remember that.”

Mrs. Dane dropped her flaming eyes to the fan that shook a little
in her jewelled hands. Perhaps it was best to hold the thunder and
lightning that she ached to release; after all, it was clearly
impossible that he should actually mean the sinister things that he
was implying about her incomparable Lilah! It would be an insult to
that radiantly serene creature to admit that insult could so much
as touch her. She raised defiant eyes to his mocking ones.

“Yes, that’s possible; Lilah is divinely kind to any beggar that
crosses her path--it isn’t in her to hurt a fly, and she must have
been gracious to that wretched boy until he made it impossible.
But here is Monsieur De Nemours and the lady herself! Let’s go
into the next room, shall we? Lilah, you lovely wonder, you look
sixteen--and young for your age, at that. Let’s see, the Havilands
aren’t here yet, and Bob Hyde telephoned that he and Sylvia would
be late----”

O’Hara followed the swift, bird-like voice into the next room. By
and by it would stop and he and Lilah would have to find words to
fill the silence. What words should he choose? He was too tired to
be careful--too tired to think; what devilish Fate was thrusting
him into a position where he must do both?

She was talking to De Nemours, the shining head tilted back a
little, the hushed music of her voice drifting across the room
to him like a little breeze. She had on a black frock, slim and
straight--not a jewel, not a flower, but all of spring laughed and
danced and sang and sparkled in that upturned face. O’Hara’s hand
closed sharply on the back of the chair. What if he were wrong--if
this were all some ugly trick that his worn-out nerves were
playing? After all, Lucia Dane had known her for years, and women’s
friendships were notoriously exacting. What did he know of her save
that she was lovely? Ah, lovely, lovely to heartbreak, as she stood
there laughing up at De Nemours--at once still and sparkling, in
that magical way of hers, like sunshine dancing on a quiet pool.
Was it some devil in him that made him suspect the angel in her?
Sometimes he thought that he must be going mad.

He had been so sure of himself; no woman was to touch his life
until he had moulded it into its appointed shape--and then he would
find a clear-eyed comrade who would be proud and humble in his
glory--some girl, wise and tender and simple, who would always be
waiting, quiet-eyed and quiet-hearted when he turned his tired
steps to home--someone in whose kind arms he would find peace and
rest and quiet. For he would be Man, the conqueror, and he would
have deep need of these. So he had decreed, during the hard years
that brought him to this place where, if he stretched only a little
higher, he could touch the shining dreams--and behold, a door
had opened and closed, and a yellow-haired girl had come in--and
his ordered world was chaos and madness. He knew, with a sense
of profoundly rebellious despair, that he was out of hand; his
nerves had him, and they were riding him unmercifully, revenging
themselves richly for all the days and nights that he had crushed
them down and scorned them and ignored them. They had him now, this
arrogant young dreamer, out to save a world--they had him now, for
all his dreams!

“Mr. O’Hara, aren’t you taking me in to dinner?”

He started as violently as though she had touched his bare heart
with those soft fingers of hers.

“You were a thousand miles away,” said the fairy voice, and the
hand rested lightly on his arm. “I hate to bring you back, but
they’re all going in, you see. Was it a pleasant country that you
were playing in?”

“Pleasant enough,” he told her hardly. “But it’s poor sport looking
down on a lost inheritance from the edge of a precipice. Did I seem
to be enjoying it?”

“You looked as most of us feel on the edge of a precipice, I
suppose--a little terrified, and a good deal thrilled. Was the lost
heritage a pretty place?”

“As pretty as most lost places,” said O’Hara.

Lilah Lindsay leaned toward him, pushing the flowers between them a
little aside.

“But why not turn your back on it?” she asked, her eyes laughing
into his, friendly and adventurous. “You might climb higher up the
mountain, and find some spot so strange and beautiful that it will
make the little garden in the valley seem a dull spot well lost.”

“I have already turned my back,” he said.

“I think that I am glad,” said Lilah Lindsay. “You see, you do not
belong in the valley. Will you tell me something, Mr. O’Hara?”

“What is there that I can tell you?”

“Oh, many things. I’m not wisdom incarnate, I know, but I have
enough wits to realize that stupidity has you fast in his clutch if
he can once get you to stop asking questions. I shall go down to my
grave with ‘Why?’ still on my lips, I promise you!”

“Aren’t you afraid of exhausting our wretched little hoard of
information?”

He felt as though some gigantic hand had released its grasp about
his heart. If she would only keep the laughter dancing through her
lashes he was safe.

“No, no; it’s inexhaustible, if properly handled.” Her voice was
dancing, too. “I came across an old formula once; it’s served
me well many and many a time, when I’ve seen a resentful and
suspicious look in some man’s eyes that says, ‘Young woman, you are
leading me to believe that you know more than I do. Young woman,
you are boring me.’ I can drive that look from any man’s eyes in
the world!”

“With what alchemy, little magician?”

She leaned closer again, and suddenly he smelt the violets--the
room was full of them--the world itself was full of them!

“Why, I ask him to spell a word; any nice, simple word like ‘cat’
or ‘dog,’ so that he will be sure to be able to spell it, poor
dear! And in thirty seconds the sky is blue, and the birds are
singing, and God’s in his heaven and woman in her proper place.
It’s white magic, truly!”

“Truly,” O’Hara laughed back at her, “and truly, and truly, I’m
believing you.” He felt light-headed with happiness--oh, surely,
this was clear candour that she was giving him; all this lovely
nonsense was cool water to his fever. Lucia Dane was right--the
rest was ugly madness. “But what was the nice simple word that you
were going to ask me to spell?”

“It’s rather a long and difficult word, I’m afraid,” she said
gravely. “I was going to ask how you, an Irishman, came to be the
British Representative in our Council?”

For a minute all the old, sick suspicion clouded the gray laughter
of his eyes--his face grew hard and still--then the unswerving
candour of the eyes lifted to his smote him to the heart, and he
smiled down reassuringly.

“I suppose that it does seem damned queer. But you see, I happen to
be British first and Irish second. Does that seem impossible?”

“No,” she replied slowly, “but it’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. It’s infernally lonely work, I can tell you. You
see, I was born and bred in Dublin; all my family think I’m a black
traitor. They’re hot against England, and hot against me. They
won’t believe that Ireland is my heart’s heart. But England--oh,
she’s the power and the glory--she can lift the Irish high and safe
out of their despair, though it’s blind from weeping the poor souls
are--they’ll never be seeing it.”

The Irish in him was burning in his eyes and on his tongue--she
stirred and nodded.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I suppose that our Southern men who
fought  for the Union met with just such hatred and misunderstanding.
And yet they were the ones who loved her best, the proud and lovely
South--they who were willing to bear her hatred that they might save
her soul.”

“Oh, it’s the wonder you are for understanding!” His heart was
shaking his voice, but the callous and greatly bored gentleman on
the other side of Mrs. Lindsay suddenly raised an energetic protest.

“See here, Lovely Lady, are you going to leave me to commune with
my soul for the rest of the evening? For the last ten minutes I’ve
been trying----”

O’Hara turned to the impatient young woman on his left, the ardour
still lingering in his face. It lingered so convincingly that he
proceeded to thrill her clear through to her small bones; she
spent the next few days in a state of dreamy preoccupation that
fairly distracted her adoring husband, and continued to cherish
indefinitely the conviction that she had inspired a devastating if
hopeless passion. It was lucky for her that she never knew that all
that pulled O’Hara through the next ten minutes was a strong effort
of the imagination, by which he substituted a head of palest gold
for the curly brown one and a voice of silver magic for some rather
shrill chatter. And then, suddenly, it was in blessed truth the
silver voice.

“You see, I was specially interested in your feeling for Ireland
because of the situation touched on in your record. That’s serious,
isn’t it?”

“Serious to desperation.”

“But a great deal of it’s just surmise on your part, I suppose?”

“Surmise?” His voice was suddenly weary. “No, no, it’s the rotten
truth. All the facts are there, even the names of the leaders in
the plot.”

“But how can you be so sure?”

“I can be sure.” There was a grim certainty in his tone that left
little room for doubt.

“You use spies?”

“Spies? You might call them that. There are three ring-leaders in
the conspiracy; the youngest was my room-mate in college.”

“I see.” After a moment in which she sat quite still, clear-eyed
and pensive, she asked, “Now that you have all the details of the
plot, why don’t you crush it?”

“To do anything now would precipitate the bloodiest kind of civil
war again. We must move with the greatest care; God help Ireland if
wind of it reaches the other party. They’re straining at the leash
like mad dogs already.”

“England must have great faith in your discretion,” said Lilah
Lindsay, and O’Hara’s face suddenly flamed like the Crusader’s of
old.

“God grant it’s not misplaced,” he said simply. “It’s sleepless
I’ve gone these many nights looking for a way out--and now I think
we’ve found one that’s neither too hard nor too weak. It’s been
weary work hunting it. You see it’s not only Ireland we must help;
it’s all the little, unhappy countries lost in the dark, and like
to kill themselves before they find the light. Sometimes it breaks
the heart in your body to watch them.” His eyes were sombre with
all the useless pain in the world.

“Then don’t let’s watch them for a little while,” she said gently.
“I should think shame on myself for making you talk shop this way;
I do, I do! But it’s hard to shake it off, isn’t it?”

“Not when you smile like that.”

Lilah Lindsay smiled like that again.

“Now and then,” she murmured, “you are just about six years old.”

“Why did you cut off your hair?” demanded O’Hara, and his voice was
a trifle unsteady.

“Why?” She brushed it back with light fingers, gay as a child once
more. “Oh, it used to take me hours to wind it about my head and
coil it over my ears; it was way below my waist, you know, and I
found it very distracting, to me and--other people. Don’t you like
it this way?”

“Below your waist,” he said. “Oh, then you must be a real Fairy
Princess, all shining white and gold.”

“But don’t you like it this way?” asked Delilah.

“It’s beautiful,” said O’Hara. “But in every foolish heart of us
there’s a lady in a tower to whom we call ‘Rappunzel, Rappunzel,
let down your hair’--waiting to go climbing up the shining locks to
her heart--and Paradise.”

Delilah rested her chin on linked fingers, her eyes at once dancing
and demure. “How lamentably old-fashioned you are for all your
radicalism. Shall I let my hair grow?”

“It’s the wonder it must be,” he whispered. “Breaking and foaming
below your waist.”

“I’ve always thought of it, somehow, as a--a symbol,” she said, her
eyes fixed on the coffee that she was slowly stirring. “When I cut
it off, I said to each shining length, ‘There you go, Folly--and
you, Frailty--and you, Weakness----’”

“And did you never think that your namesake must have cried of old
to other shining locks ‘There you go, Strength?’”

The new Delilah looked suddenly enchantingly mischievous. “Well,
but that was not her own hair! It belonged to a mere man who chose
a very vulnerable spot to keep his strength. You have learned
wisdom since Samson.”

“I wonder!” said O’Hara.

“I’ll remember what you have told me,” she laughed up at him.
“You seem to hold that woman’s strength, too, is in her hair.
Perhaps--perhaps you are right, after all. Will you come to see me
one of these days, and try to convert me?”

They were all standing; he rose, too, his eyes holding her.

“When may I come--to-morrow?”

She smiled back at his swift urgency--then bent the primrose head
in assent. O’Hara held back the curtains for her to pass through.

“To-morrow,” he told her, his eyes still lit with that incredulous
wonder. “To-morrow is a great way off!”


III

“I’ll just wait here,” he said to the pretty maid. “I’m not dressed
for a party. You might tell Mrs. Lindsay that--that when she’s not
too busy, I’d like awfully to speak to her for a minute.”

“Very well, Mr. O’Hara.” Her voice had all the impersonal blankness
of the well-trained servant, but once on the dark stairs she shook
her glossy head dismally. She had come to know him well in the
past weeks.

“The Saints preserve the poor man, it’s fit for a long rest in a
pine box he’s looking, and that’s no lie at all! And it’s my fine
lady upstairs that is after painting shadows black as the pit under
his poor eyes, or my name’s not Bridget O’Neill. It’s a wicked
world entirely, and that’s what it is!”

O’Hara stood watching the door through which she had vanished.
In a minute--in five minutes--in ten minutes--someone else might
stand framed in that door; he could not tear his eyes from it, but
stood staring, hands thrust deep into his pockets, very quiet, with
fever playing behind the tense stillness of his face. The painted
clock on the mantel chimed the hour out twelve times, each stroke
a mocking peal of laughter. His shoulders sagged abruptly and he
turned from the door. What was the use?--she wasn’t coming. She
would never come again.

He crossed to the mantel slowly, noting all the studied grace
with desperate tenderness. To whom could it belong but Lilah, the
little room that he loved, demure and gay--intimate as a boudoir,
formal as a study? Those slim hands of hers must have placed the
bright flowers in the low bowls of powdered Venetian glass, and
lined the bookcases with deep-coloured books, set the small bright
fire burning with pine cones, and lighted the waxen candles that
were casting their gracious light all about him. The satin-wood
desk looked austere enough, with its orderly stacks of paper, its
trays of sharpened pencils and shining pens--but the lace pillow
in the deep chair by the fire was a little crumpled, there was a
half-burnt cigarette in the enamelled tray, and trailing its rosy
grace shamelessly across a sombre cushion was a bit of chiffon and
ribbon, the needle still sticking in it. It could not have been
so long ago that she had been here; all the dainty disorder spoke
eloquently of her still.

Oh, thrice-accursed fool that he had been to risk even for a second
the happiness that for weeks had been fluttering closer to him--the
happiness that only a day before had almost closed its shining
wings about him! They had been looking at some of her old snapshots
of a motor trip through Ireland, laughing together in the enchanted
intimacy which they had acquired over the begoggled, be-veiled, and
beswaddled small creature that she assured him was her exquisite
self--and then she had come upon a snapshot that was only too
obviously not Ireland. It was of a vine-hung terrace, with the
sea stretching far out in the distance, and the sunlight dappling
through onto the upturned face of a man--quite a young man, in
white flannels, swinging a careless tennis racquet and laughing in
the sun. For a minute her sure fingers had faltered; there, very
deliberately, she had picked it up, tearing it into small pieces,
dropping them deftly into the dancing fire.

“Here’s one of us having tea by the road,” she had continued
evenly, but O’Hara had not even heard her. His mind was far away,
sick with apprehension and suspicion, all the old dim terrors
suddenly rampant.

“Lilah--it’s unspeakable of me to worry you with this--but I can’t
get it out of my mind somehow. Will you tell me--will you tell
me if they ever found out who sent that anonymous letter to your
husband?”

She had stared back at him with strange eyes set in a face from
which every trace of emotion had suddenly been frozen.

“The letter? No.” The small remote voice was utterly forbidding.
“You are quite right; it is cruel to remind of those times. What
difference can it possibly make to you?”

He had fought desperately to find some words that would show her
what need his sick soul had of assurance, but he had found none. He
could only stare at her dumbly, his wretched eyes assuring that it
made, somehow, a huge difference.

“But why?”

And he had cried hopelessly, “Oh, I may be mad--I think I am--but I
can’t get it out of my head. I keep wondering whether you--if you
sent----”

“I?” She had cried out as sharply as though he had struck her,
and then sat very still, fighting her way back to composure, inch
by inch. When she spoke again her voice was very low, incredibly
controlled.

“You are implying something that is too monstrous for sanity. May
I ask what motive--what possible motive, however abominable--you
think that I could have had for wrecking my husband’s career?”

He had whispered, “Oh, God forgive me, what motive had Antony’s
Egypt? What motive have any of you for flaunting your power over
us? You crack the whip, and we go crashing through the hoop of our
dreams, smashing it--smashing it for ever.”

She had risen then, sweeping him from brow to heel with her
unrelenting eyes.

“How you know us!” His heart had sickened under that terrible small
laugh, cold as frozen water. And she had turned to the door, her
head high. “If you can think such things of me--if you can even
dream them--your presence here is simply an insult to us both. I
must ask you to leave. And unless you realize the grotesque madness
of your accusation, I must ask you not to come here again. That
releases you from dinner to-morrow night, naturally. I don’t think
that there is anything more to be said.”

No, there had been nothing more to be said--nothing. He could
not remember how he had got himself out of the house--he could
not remember anything save a dull nightmare of vacillation and
despair, that had finally driven him back to the little room,
whipped and beaten, ready to capitulate on any terms--ready for
any life that would buy him a moment’s happiness. And now--now
she would not come, even to accept his surrender. He turned
from the mantel violently, and felt his heart contract in swift
panic. A man was watching him intently from the other end of the
room--a man with a hateful, twisted face--he caught his breath in
a shaken laugh. Those damned nerves of his would wreck him yet!
It was only his reflection in the cloudy Venetian mirror; the
firelight and candlelight played strange tricks with it, shadowing
it grotesquely--still, even looked at closely, it was nothing to
boast of. He stood contemplating it grimly with its tortured mouth
and haunted eyes--and then suddenly the air was full of violets.
He turned slowly, a strange peace holding his tired heart. She had
come to him; nothing else would ever matter again.

She was standing in the doorway, a little cloud of palest gray.
It was the first time that he had seen her in light colours, and
she had done something to her hair--caught it up with a great
sparkling comb--it shone like pale fire. Her arms were quite full
of violets--the largest ones that he had ever seen, like purple
pansies. He stood drinking her in with his tired eyes, not even
looking for words. It was she who spoke.

“Bridget told me that you were here. I thought that you were not
coming to-night.”

He shook his head, with a torn and lamentable smile. “You
said--until I realized my madness. Believe me--believe me, I have
realized it, Lilah.”

She came slowly into the room, but the nearer she came to him the
farther she seemed away, secure in her ethereal loveliness, her
velvet eyes turned to ice.

“You have realized it, I am afraid, too late. There are still two
tables of bridge upstairs; I have only a few minutes to give you.
Was there anything that you wished to say?”

He shook his head dumbly, and she sank into the great chair,
stifling a small yawn perfunctorily.

“Oh, I’m deathly tired. It’s been a hideous evening, from beginning
to end. Come, amuse me, good tragedian, make me laugh just once,
and I may forgive you. I may forgive you, even though you do not
desire it.” Again that fleeting smile, exquisite and terrible.

But O’Hara was on his knees beside her.

“Delilah, don’t laugh, don’t laugh--I’m telling you the laughter is
dead in me. I’d rather see you weeping for the poor, blind fool who
lost the key to Paradise.”

“Who threw it away,” she amended, touching the violets with light
fingers. “But never forget, it’s better not to have set your foot
within its gates than to be exiled from it. Never forget that, my
tragedian.”

He raised his head, haggard and alert. “Lilah, what do you mean?”

“Why, nothing--only Lucia Dane was here for dinner and she thought
it--strange--that you and I should be the gossip of Washington
these days. When she had finished with what you had said to her, I
thought it strange, too. And I assured her that there would be no
more cause for gossip.”

“I was mad when I talked to that little fool,” he told her
fiercely. “Clean out of my head trying to fight off your magic.
That was the first night--the first night that I owned to myself
that I loved you.”

“Your madness seems to be recurrent,” she murmured. “You should
take measures against it.”

“I have taken measures. It shall never touch you again. I know now
that it has simply been an obsession--a hallucination--anything in
Heaven or Hell that you want to call it. You have all my trust, all
my faith.”

“It is a terrible thing not to trust a woman,” she said. “More
terrible than you know. Sometimes it makes her unworthy of trust.”

“Not you,” he whispered. “Never.”

“We’re delicate machinery, tragedian. Touch a hidden spring in us
with your clumsy fingers and the little thing that was ticking
away as faithfully and peacefully as an alarm-clock stops for a
minute--and then goes on ticking. Only it has turned to an infernal
machine--and it will destroy you.”

She was silent for a moment, her fingers resting lightly on that
bowed head. When she spoke again her voice was gentle. “Last night,
after you had gone, I remembered what you had said about Antony
and his Egypt, and I found the play. Parts of it still go singing
through my head. They loved each other so, those two magnificent
fools. He finds her treacherous a hundred times, and each time
forgives her, and loves her again--and she repays him beyond
belief--far, far beyond power and treachery and death. Do you
remember his cry in that first hour of his disaster?

   “‘O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?’

“And when she weeps for pardon, how he tells her

   “‘Fall not a tear, I say: one of them rates
     All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss,
     Even this repays me.’

“Though she has ruined him utterly--though he sees it and cries
aloud

   “‘O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,--
     Whose eye becked forth my wars, and called them home,
     Like a right gipsy hath at false and loose
     Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.’

“Still, still his last thought is to reach her arms.

    ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying, only
     I here importune death awhile, until
     Of many thousand kisses the poor last
     I lay upon thy lips.’”

“Why, he was well repaid,” said that strange, humble voice.

“I am glad that you feel that,” Delilah told him, and she rose
swiftly. “Would you like to kiss me? You see, I have ruined you.”

O’Hara stumbled to his feet.

“What are you saying?” he whispered, a dreadful incredulity driving
the words through his stiffened lips.

“That I have ruined you. I have sent your notes on the Irish
situation to the other party.”

“You are mad.”

“No, no.” She shook her head reassuringly. “Quite sane. I didn’t
address them in my own handwriting, naturally. The envelope is
typewritten, but the notes are in long-hand; yours. The English
Government will be forced to believe that for once it has misplaced
its trust--but Ireland should pay you well--if she lives through
civil war.”

“By God----” His voice failed him for a moment. “This is some
filthy dream.”

“No dream, believe me.” She came closer to him, radiant and serene.
“Did you think that I was a yellow-headed doll, that you could
insult me beyond belief, mock me to my friends, slander me to
the Committee of which I was a member? Monsieur De Nemours was
good enough to warn me against you, also. I am no doll, you see;
I happen to be a woman. We have not yet mastered that curiously
devised code that you are pleased to term Honour--a code which
permits you to betray a woman but not a secret--to cheat a man
out of millions in business but not out of a cent at cards. It’s
a little artificial, and we’re ridiculously primitive. We use
lynch-law still; swift justice with the nearest weapon at hand.”

O’Hara was shaking like a man in a chill, his voice hardly above a
whisper. “What have you done? What have you done, Delilah?”

“Don’t you understand?” She spoke with pretty patience, as though
to some backward child. “I have ruined you--you and your Ireland,
too. I sent----”

And suddenly, shaken and breathless, she was in his arms.

“Oh, Ireland--Ireland and I!” But even at that strange cry she
never stirred. “It’s you--you who are ruined, my Magic--and it’s I
who have done it, driving you to this ugly madness.” He held her as
though he would never let her go, sheltering the bowed golden head
with his hand. “Though I forgive you a thousand thousand times, how
will you forgive yourself, my little Love? You who would not hurt a
flower, where will you turn when you see what you have done?”

He could feel her tears on his hand; she was weeping piteously,
like a terrified child.

“Oh, you do love me, you do love me! I was so frightened--I thought
that you would never love me.”

He held her closer, infinitely careful of that shining fragility.

“I love nothing else.”

“Not Ireland?”

He closed his hunted eyes, shutting out Memory.

“I hated Ireland,” wept the small voice fiercely, “because you
loved her so.”

“Hush, hush, my Heart.”

“But you do--you do love me best?”

“God forgive me, will you make me say so?”

There was a moment’s silence, then something brushed his hand,
light as a flower, and Delilah raised her head.

“No, no, wait.” She was laughing, tremulous and exquisite. “Did you
think--did you think that I had really sent your notes?”

O’Hara felt madness touching him; he stared down at her, voiceless.

“But of course, of course, I never sent them. They are upstairs;
wait, I’ll get them for you--wait!”

She slipped from his arms and was half way to the door before his
voice arrested her.

“Lilah!”

“Yes?”

“You say--that you have not sent the notes?”

“Darling idiot, how could you have thought that I would send them?
This is Life, not melodrama!”

“You never--you never thought of sending them?”

“Never, never.” Her laughter rippled about him. “I wanted to
see----”

But he was groping for the mantel, sick and dizzy now that there
was no need of courage. Delilah was at his side in a flash, her
arms about him.

“Oh, my dear!” He had found the chair but she still clung to him.
“What is it? You’re ill--you’re ill!”

Someone was coming down the stairs; she straightened to rigidity,
and was at the door in a flash.

“Captain Lawrence!”

The young Englishman halted abruptly--wheeled.

“Captain Lawrence, Mr. O’Hara is here; he had to see me about some
papers, and he has been taken ill. He’s been overworking hideously
lately. Will you get me some brandy for him?”

“Oh, I say, what rotten luck!” He lingered, concern touching his
pleasant boyish face. “Where do I get the brandy, Mrs. Lindsay?”

“Ask Lucia Dane, she knows how to get hold of the maids. And hurry,
will you?”

She was back at his side before the words had left; he could feel
her fingers brushing his face like frightened butterflies, but he
did not open his eyes. He was too mortally tired to lift his lids.

“Here you are, Mrs. Lindsay. Try this, old son. Steady does it.”

He swallowed, choked, felt the warm fire sweep through him, tried
to smile, tried to rise.

“No, no, don’t move--don’t let him move, Captain Lawrence.”

“You stay where you are for a bit, young feller, my lad. Awfully
sorry that I have to run, Mrs. Lindsay, but they telephoned for me
from the Embassy. Some excitement about Turkey, the devil swallow
them all. Good-night--take it easy, O’Hara!”

“Oh, Captain Lawrence!” He turned again. “Have you the letter that
I asked you to mail?”

“Surely, right here. I’ll post it on my way over.”

“Thanks a lot, but I’ve decided not to send it, after all.” She
stretched out her hand, smiling. “It’s an article on women in
public life, and it’s going to need quite a few changes under the
circumstances.”

“The circumstances?”

“Yes. You might tell them at the Embassy--if they’re interested.
I’m handing in my resignation on the International Committee
to-morrow.”

O’Hara gripped the arm of his chair until he felt it crack beneath
his fingers. Captain Lawrence was staring at her in undisguised
amazement.

“But I say! How in the world will they get along without you?”

“Oh, they’ll get along admirably.” She dismissed it as easily as
though it were a luncheon engagement. “That young Lyons is the very
man they need; he’s really brilliant and a perfect encyclopædia
of information. I’ll see you at the Embassy on Friday, won’t I?
Good-night.”

Her arms were about O’Hara before the hall door slammed.

“You’re better now? All right? Oh, you frightened me so! It wasn’t
that foolish trick of mine that hurt you? Say no, say no--I
couldn’t ever hurt you!”

“Never. I should be whipped for frightening you.” His arms were
fast about her, but his eyes were straying. What had she done with
that letter? He had caught a glimpse of it, quite a bulky letter,
in a large envelope, with a typewritten address--typewritten.

“Have you noticed my hair?” The magic voice was touched with gayety
again, and O’Hara brushed the silken mist with his lips, his eyes
still seeking. “I remembered what you said, you see; it grows most
awfully fast--one of these days it will be as long as Rappunzel’s
or Melisande’s. Will you like it then?”

Ah, there it was, face down on the lacquer table. He drew a deep
breath.

“Lilah, that letter--what did you say was in that letter?”

There was a sudden stillness in the room; he could hear the painted
clock ticking clearly. Then she spoke quietly:

“It’s an article that I have written on women in public life.
Didn’t you hear me telling Captain Lawrence?”

“Will you let me see it?”

Again that stillness; then, very gently, Delilah pushed away his
arms and rose.

“No,” she said.

“You will not?”

“No.” The low voice was inflexible. “I know what you are thinking.
You are thinking that those are the Irish notes; that I had fully
intended to send them this evening; that it was only an impulse of
mine that saved you, as it would have been an impulse that wrecked
you. You are thinking that next time it may fall differently. And
you are willing to believe me guilty until I am proved innocent.
You have always been that--always.”

He bowed his head.

“I could hand you that envelope and prove that I am entirely
innocent, but I’ll not purchase your confidence. It should be a
gift--oh, it should be more. It is a debt that you owe me. Are you
going to pay it?”

O’Hara raised haggard eyes to hers.

“How should I pay it?”

“If you insist on seeing this, I will show it to you; but I swear
to you that I will never permit you to enter this house again; I
swear it. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“If you will trust me, I will give you your notes, love you for
the rest of my life--marry you to-morrow.” She went to the table,
picked up the envelope, and stood waiting. “What shall I do?”

He rose unsteadily, catching at the mantel. No use--he was beaten.

“Will you get me the notes?”

He saw her shake then, violently, from head to foot, but her eyes
never wavered. She nodded, and was gone.

He stood leaning against the mantel, his dark head buried in his
arms. Beaten! He would never know what was in that envelope--never,
never. She could talk to all Eternity about faith and trust; he
would go wondering all his life through. If he had stood his
ground--if he had claimed the envelope and she had been proven
innocent, he would have lost her but he would have found his faith.
He had sold his soul to purchase her body. The painted clock struck
once, and he raised his head----

No, no, he was mad. She was right--entirely, absolutely right--she
was just and merciful, she who might have scourged him from her
sight for ever. What reason in heaven or earth had he to distrust
her? Because her voice was silver and her hair was gold? Because
violets scattered their fragrance when she stirred? Oh, his folly
was thrice damned. If he had a thousand proofs against her, he
should still trust her. What was it that that chap Browning said?

    “What so false as truth is
     False to thee?”

That was what love should be--not this sick and faltering thing----

“Here are the notes,” said Delilah’s voice at his shoulder, and her
eyes added, wistful and submissive: “And here am I.”

O’Hara took them in silence, his fingers folding them mechanically,
measuring, weighing, appraising. The envelope could have held them
easily----

She turned from him with a little cry.

“Oh, you are cruel, cruel!”

He stood staring at her for a moment--at the small, desolate figure
with its bowed head, one arm flung across her eyes like a stricken
child--and suddenly his heart melted within him. She was weeping,
and he had made her weep. He took a swift step toward her, and
halted. In the mirror at the far end of the room he could see
her, dimly caught between firelight and candlelight, shadowy and
lovely--in the mirror at the far end of the room she was smiling,
mischievous and tragic and triumphant. He stared incredulously--and
then swept her to him despairingly, burying his treacherous eyes in
the bright hair in which clustered the invisible violets.




HER GRACE


The first time that the Black Duke saw her she was laughing--and
the last time that he saw her she was laughing, too.

He and a ruddy-faced companion had fared forth doggedly into the
long summer twilight in quest of some amusement to dispel the
memory of the extravagantly gloomy little dinner that they had
shared at the club, followed by a painful hour over admirable port
and still more admirable cigars. It was August, and London was
empty as a drum of the pretty faces and pretty hats and pretty
voices that made it tolerable at times--it was as dry and dusty
as life itself, and John Saint Michael Beauclerc, ninth Duke of
Bolingham, tramping along the dull street beside a dull comrade,
thought to himself with a sudden alien passion that youth was a
poor thing to look back on, and age an ugly thing to look forward
to, and middle age worse than either. He scowled down magnificently
from his great height at the once-gregarious Banford, whose flushed
countenance bore the consternation of one who has made a bad
bargain and sees no way out of it--no duke lived who was worth such
an evening, said Gaddy Banford’s hunted eyes. This particular duke
eyed him sardonically.

“Close on to nine,” he said. “Well, then, what time does this holy
paragon do her turn?”

“About nine,” replied his unhappy host. “But, I say, you know,
I don’t want to drag you around if you’d rather not. She’s
frightfully good in her line, but if dancing bores you----”

“You’re dashed considerate all at once,” remarked his guest. “If I
haven’t cracked by now, I fancy I’ll live through the best dancing
of the century. That’s what you called it, wasn’t it? Here, you!”

He waved an imperious hand at a forlorn hansom clattering down
the silent street, and it jolted to a halt under one of the gas
lamps. For it was not in this century that the Duke of Bolingham
met Miss Biddy O’Rourke. No, it was in a century when hansom
cabs and gas lamps were commonplaces--when ladies wore bonnets
like butterflies on piled-up ringlets, and waltzed for hours in
satin slippers and kid gloves two sizes too small for them--when
gentlemen cursed eloquently but noiselessly because maidens whisked
yards of tulle and tarlatan behind them when they danced--a century
of faded flowers and fresh sentiments and enormous sleeves--of
conservatories and cotillions and conventions--of long, long
letters and little perfumed notes--of intrigues over tea tables,
and coaching parties to the races, and Parma violets, and pretty
manners, and broken hearts. A thousand years ago, you might think,
but after all it was only around the corner of the last century
that the Duke of Bolingham stepped into the decrepit hansom closely
followed by his unwilling retainer, and in no uncertain tones bade
the driver proceed to the Liberty Music Hall.

He sat cloaked in silence while they drove, his heavy shoulders
hunched up, his eyes half closed, brooding like a despoiled monarch
and a cheated child over the sorry trick that life had played him.
He had had everything--and he had found nothing worth having. He
had the greatest fortune in England--and one of the greatest names.
He had Beaton House, the Georgian miracle that was all London’s
pride--and Gray Courts, that dream of sombre beauty, that was all
England’s pride--Gray Courts that even now held his three tall,
black-browed sons who could shoot and hunt and swear as well as any
in the country--yes, even fourteen-year Roddy. That held, too, a
collection of Spanish and Portuguese armour second to none, and a
collection of Van Dykes first of any, and the finest clipped yew
hedge in a thousand miles. That held the ladies Pamela, Clarissa,
Maud, and Charlotte, his good sisters, too acidulous to find a
husband between them, for all their great dowers and name and
accomplishments. That for six long years had held the Lady Alicia
Honoria Fortescue, a poor, sad, dull little creature, married in
a moment of pity and illusion when they were both young enough to
know better, who had gone in mortal terror of him from the night
that they crossed the threshold of the Damask Room to the day that
they laid her away under the kind marble in the little chapel.

He sat huddled in the corner of the hansom, remembering with the
same shock of sick amazement his despair at the discovery of her
fear of him; it still haunted every tapestried corridor of Gray
Courts--every panelled hall in Beaton House--he set his teeth and
turned his head, and swore that he would take the next boat to
France and drink himself to death in Cannes. And the hansom cab
stopped.

Gaddy Banford had two seats in the first row of stalls; had ’em
for every night that the lady danced, he informed the duke with
chastened pride. The duke, trampling over the outraged spectators
with more than royal indifference, eyed him grimly.

“Spend the rest of your valuable time hanging round the stage door,
what?” he inquired audibly.

Five of the outraged spectators said “Sh-s-h,” and the duke,
squaring about in his seat, favoured them with so black a glance
that the admonitions died on their lips and apologies gathered in
their eyes. Banford smiled nervously and ingratiatingly.

“Oh, rather not--no, no, nothing of that kind whatever. She doesn’t
go in for stage-door meetings, you know. I’ve had the honour of
meeting the lady twice and she’s most frightfully jolly and all
that, but----”

“Sh-h-h,” enjoined one rebellious spirit, studiously avoiding
the duke’s eye. That gentleman remarked “Ha!” with derisive
inflection and turned a contemptuous eye on the stage. A very
large and apparently intoxicated mouse was chasing a small and
agitated cat with rhythmic zest, the two having concluded the
more technical portion of their programme, in which they had ably
defended against all comers their engaging title of the “Jolly
Joralomons, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America’s Most Unique and
Mirth Compelling Acrobats, Tumblers, and Jugglers.” The Jolly
Joralomons scampered light-heartedly off, rolling their equipment
of bright balls before them with dexterous paws, and capered back
even more light-heartedly to blow grateful kisses off the tips of
their whiskers to an enraptured audience, with which the Duke of
Bolingham was all too obviously not in accord.

“Gad!” he remarked with appalled conviction. “Death’s too good for
them! Here, let’s get out of this while I’ve got strength----”

Banford lifted a pleading hand. There was a warning roll of drums,
a preliminary lilt of violins, and the orchestra swung triumphantly
into the “Biddy Waltz”--the waltz that all London had revolved to
for three good months. The house sighed like a delighted child, and
far up in the gallery an ecstatic voice called “Ah, there, lassie!”
And another echoed “Come ahn, Biddy--Alf and me’s ’ere!”

And onto a stage that was black as night, with one great bound as
though she had leapt through infinite space from a falling star
into the small safe circle of the spotlight, came Biddy O’Rourke,
straight on the tips of her silver toes, with laughter for a dark
world in both her outstretched hands--and the piece of the world
that faced her rose to its feet and shouted a welcome. All but one.

The Black Duke of Bolingham sat square in the centre in the first
row of seats in the Liberty Music Hall as still as though he had
been struck down by lightning, with the “Biddy Waltz” rising and
falling about him unheeded, his eyes fixed incredulously on the
Vision in the spotlight. The Vision had already fixed the eyes
and turned the heads and broken the hearts of half the masculine
population of London (the other half not having seen her!) but
nothing that the duke had heard had prepared him for this.

Who could have told him that a music hall dancer called Biddy
O’Rourke, late of Dublin, no taller than a child and seventeen
years old to the day, could look like a fairy and an angel and an
imp and a witch and a dream? Not Gaddy Banford, of a certainty--not
Gaddy, who, in a burst of lyric enthusiasm, had confided to
his duke that she was little and blonde and light on her feet.
“Little”--you who were more fantastically minute than any elf,
Biddy! Blonde--oh, sacrilege, to dismiss thus that foam and froth
of curls cresting and bubbling about your gay head like champagne,
with the same pure glitter of pale gold--that skin of pearl
beneath which danced little flames of rose fire--those eyes, bluer
than anything on earth--blue as the skies and seas and flowers
that haunt our dreams. Light on your feet--oh, Biddy, you, who
soared and floated and drifted like a feather in the wind, like a
butterfly gone mad--like a flying leaf and a dancing star! Had he
said that you had a nose tilted as a flower petal, and a mouth that
tilted, too? Had he said that when you blew across the dark stage
that you would be arrayed in silver brighter than foam and white
more airy than clouds? Had he said that you would dance not only
with those miraculous toes but with your curls and with your lashes
and with your lips and with your heart? Had he said that you would
come laughing, little Biddy?

High on the tips of those incredible toes she came--nearer and
nearer, so swift and light and sure that it seemed to Bolingham’s
dazzled eyes that it would take less than a breath to blow her
over that barrier of light straight into his arms--straight into
his heart--into his tired and lonely heart. He leaned forward, and
the vision of gold and silver stared back at him, faltered, tilted
forward on her toes, and flung down to him the airy music of her
mirth.

“Oh, I couldn’t any more dance with you looking like that than I
could grow feathers!” cried the Vision. “No, not if Saint Patrick
himself were to bid me. Whatever in the whole world’s the matter?”

The audience stopped howling its delirious approval at their
Biddy’s appearance in order to revel in their Biddy’s chaff. No
one could chaff like Biddy--no one nearer than Cork, at any rate.
It was better than seeing her dance to listen to her laugh, gentle
as a lamb, and pert as a monkey, and gay as a Bank Holiday. Free
as air, too; if any of those Johnnies in the stalls tried any of
their nonsense, it was a fair treat to hear her give ’em what for!
The audience stood on tiptoes and shoved and elbowed in riotous
good humour in their efforts to locate her latest victim--that
great black fellow with shoulders like a prize-fighter, likely. The
great black fellow promptly gratified their fondest expectations by
falling into the silver net of Biddy’s laughter and answering her
back.

“Thanks,” he replied distinctly. “Nothing in the whole world’s the
matter--now.”

“Whatever were you thinkin’ to make you scowl the big black ogre
himself then?”

And the Black Duke replied as clearly as though he were addressing
the lady in the hush of the rose garden at Gray Courts instead
of in the presence of the largest and most hilarious audience in
London.

“I was wondering how in God’s name I was going to get to you
quickly enough to tell you what I was thinking before I burst with
it.”

The transfixed Gaddy tottered where he stood, and the audience
howled unqualified approval, even while they waited for her to pin
him to the wall with her reply. But Biddy only came a step nearer,
staring down at him with the strangest look of wonder and delight
and enchanted mischief.

“Oh, whatever must you think of me, not knowing you at all?” she
cried to him over the muted lilt of her waltz. “’Twas the lights
in my eyes, maybe--or maybe the lights in yours. It’s the foolish
creature I am anyway you put it. Would you be waiting for ten
minutes?”

“No,” said His Grace firmly.

“Seven?”

“It’ll kill me,” said His Grace. “Where will you be?”

“There’s a wee door over beyond the red curtain,” said Biddy. “You
go through that, and you’re in an alley as black as a pit, and you
take three steps--no, with the legs you have you can do it in two
with no trouble at all--and there’ll be another door with a fine
big light over it, and I’ll be under the light. Don’t die.”

“No,” said His Grace. “I won’t.”

“Play it faster than that,” Biddy cried to her stupefied musicians,
once more poised high on her silver toes. “Ah, it’s the poor, slow,
thumb-fingered creatures you are, the lot of you! Play it fast as
my Aunt Dasheen’s spotted kitten chasin’ its tail or I’ll dance
holes in your drums for you--weren’t you after hearin’ that I have
five minutes to do three great dances? It’s black-hearted fiends
you are, with your dawdlin’ and your ditherin’. Ah, darlin’s, come
on now--spin it faster than that for the poor dyin’ gentleman and
the girl that’s goin’ to save him!”

And with a flash and a dip and a swirl she was off, and the Black
Duke was off, too. Gaddy Banford put up a feeble clamour as his
guest swept by him toward the aisle.

“Oh, but my dear fellow--no, but I say, wait a bit--she’s simply
chaffing you, you know; she’ll never in the world be there for a
minute----”

“Hand over my stick, will you?” inquired the duke affably. “You’ve
no earthly use for two. And don’t come trotting along after me,
either. She’s not expecting _you_, you know--rather not.” He swung
buoyantly off toward the red curtain, bestowing a benign nod on the
now deliriously diverted audience.

“Take a chair along, matey!” “Want a mornin’ paper? Come in ’andy
to pass away the time!” “Fetch ’im ’is tea at nine, Bertie--’e’ll
need it bad.” “Don’t you wait for her no more than twenty-four
hours, ole dear--promise us that, now----”

“Bolingham, I say----” panted the unfortunate Gaddy. “I say,
someone must have tipped her off, you know!”

“Tipped her off?”

“Told her who you were, you know?”

The duke laughed aloud and Gaddy Banford, who had never heard him
do this, jumped badly.

“D’you know what I’ve been wondering, Gaddy? I’ve been wondering
how the deuce I was going to own up to her--a duke’s such a damn
potty thing, when you come down to it. Why the devil didn’t someone
make me Emperor of Russia?”

He brushed aside the red curtain, grinned once more into Banford’s
stunned countenance, and passed with one great stride through the
door into the black alley. The door swung to behind him, and he
stood leaning against it for a minute, savouring the wonder and the
magic that he had fallen heir to. There was a drift of music in the
alley--the sky was powdered thick with stars--the air was sweet as
flowers against his face. He drew a deep breath, and turned his
head; and there she stood beneath the light, with a black scarf
over her golden head and a black cloak over her silver dress--and
it took him two strides to reach her, as she had said. She had one
hand to her heart and was breathing quickly in little light gasps,
as though she had come running.

“Were you waitin’ long?” she asked. “I never stopped at all to
change a stitch and dear knows ’twas a sin how I cheated on that
last one--no more than a flout and a spin, and not that maybe; only
I was afraid for my soul you’d be gone. Was it long you waited?”

“Forty-two years,” said His Grace. “Forty-two years and three
days.”

He watched the rose flood up to her lashes at that, but the joyous
eyes never swerved from his.

“Ah, well,” she murmured, “I waited seventeen my own self, and I
not half the size of you--no higher than your pocket, if you come
to look. I can’t think at all what you’ve been doing with yourself
all that time.”

“Don’t think--ever,” he said. “I’ve done nothing worth a moment’s
thought but miss you.”

“Have you missed me then, truly?” she whispered. “Oh, it’s from
farther than Cork I’d come to hear you say that; I’d come from
Heaven itself, may the Saints there forgive me. Say it again,
quick!”

“I’ve missed you since the day I drew breath,” he told her, and his
voice shook. “Every day that I’ve lived has been black and bare
and cold without you--blackest because I never knew I’d find you.
Biddy, is it true? Things don’t happen like this, do they? No one
out of a dream ever had such hair--no one out of a fairy tale such
eyes! Biddy, would you laugh like that if it were a dream?”

“I would that,” she remarked with decision. “It’s a fine dream and
a grand fairy tale and the truest truth you ever heard in your
life. I knew ’twas you even when you were scowlin’, but those
lights were in my eyes, so I couldn’t be sure till you smiled.”

“Biddy, how did you know?”

She pushed the scarf back from those golden bubbles with a gay
gesture of impatience.

“Well, why wouldn’t I know? That’s a queer way to talk to a bright
girl! Didn’t my own Aunt Dasheen, she that was all the family
I had till I ran off and took London for one, tell me that I’d
be the grandest dancer that ever leapt, and marry the finest
gentleman that ever walked, as big as a giant and black as a devil
and handsome as a king? And she ought to know, surely, what with
reading in tea and clear water as quick as you and me in the Good
Book. It was the wicked, cunning old thing she was, God rest her
soul.”

“Is she dead?”

“She is that,” replied Aunt Dasheen’s niece cheerfully. “Or I’d
never be here to tell it. She kept tight hold of me as if I were
a bit of gold, for all that she sorrowed and sang how I was more
trouble to her than any monkey from Egypt. If Tim Murphy and his
brothers hadn’t been coming to show the Londoners how to juggle
glass balls and brought me along to hold the things, I’d be in
the wee room tending the fire and the kitten this minute, instead
of standing under a light in a silver dress with my heart in my
hands.”

“I wish I could thank her,” said the duke.

“It’s little enough you have to thank her for,” replied his Biddy
blithely. “She was crosser than most and cooler than any, God help
her. ’Twas that spotted kitten she loved; if she hadn’t seen the
bit about me in the tea, she’d have dropped me straight out of the
window. But there was my grand gentleman and the rest of it to give
her patience. ‘Wed at seventeen, dead at----’” She caught back the
words as deftly as Tim Murphy’s glass balls, with a triumphant
shake of her curls. “‘Death to your dancing,’ she’d keep saying.
You could thank her for that, maybe--or perhaps ’twas because I
danced you stopped scowling, and you’ll not want me to leave off?”

“Biddy, it’s true then--you’re only seventeen?” His voice was
touched with a strange pain and wonder.

“Hear him, now--only, indeed! I’m seventeen the day.”

“And I past forty-two!”

“Are you no more than that?” she asked softly. “However in all the
world could you get so great and grand and fine in that little
while?”

“Oh,” he cried. “Does laughter take the sting from all that’s ugly?
Laugh again then; there’s worse still. Lord help us, darling--I’m a
duke!”

“Is that all?” she inquired regretfully. “I’d have thought a king
at the least. Well, come, there’s no helping it--’tis not all of us
get our deserts in this wicked world.”

“Biddy,” he begged. “Laugh at this, too, will you? Try, try, dear,
before it hurts us. I have three sons, Biddy. I’ve been married
before.”

She put her other hand to her heart at that, but she kept her lips
curved.

“It’s small wonder,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you have been? I’m the
shameless one to say it, but if I’d been ten girls instead of one,
it’s ten times you’d have been married.”

He put his arms about her then, and something broke in his
heart--something cold and hard and bitter. He wanted to tell her
that, but he could find no words, because he was only a duke, and
not a very articulate one at that. But the small shining creature
in his arms had words enough for two.

“Were you thinking of wedding again, maybe?”

“Oh, Biddy,” he cried, “let’s hurry!”

“If you’re asking _me_,” she said, “I’d say we were hurrying fast
and free. I can hear the air whistlin’ in my ears, I can that. Was
she a fine lady, darling?”

“Who?” he asked--and remembered--and forgot her for all time. “Oh,
she was a very fine lady, and good, and gentle, too. She died long
ago.”

“Did she, poor thing?” whispered the future Duchess of Bolingham
softly, the cloud in the blue, blue eyes gone for ever. “And me no
good at all. I wonder at you! Are they little young things, your
sons?”

“The smallest’s big enough to put you in his pocket,” he said.
“Biddy, let’s hurry. I know an Archbishop that we could have fix
it to-night--I know two, if it comes to that. One of ’em was my
godfather.”

“Well, you could know six, and ’twould be all the good it would do
you,” commented his Biddy serenely. “I know one old priest, and
his name’s Father Leary, and ’twill be a bitter grief to him, but
he may do it, since he’s one of the Saints themselves and terrible
fond of a bad girl. Archbishop, indeed!”

“Let’s find him, then, and tell him. I’ll----”

“We’ll not, then. He’s a poor old man that needs his sleep, and
we’re two mad things that should know better. See the stars,
darlin’; they’re the cool little things. We must do nothing in
haste, except leave this door, maybe. The whole lot of them will be
out on us like a lot of ravening wolves any minute. Wherever can we
go?”

“We can go and get married,” said the Duke of Bolingham, who was a
simple and determined individual. “I’ll get----”

“You might get a hansom----” Biddy danced in rapture on the tips
of her toes. “You might get that one there, and we could ride a
hundred miles or so, and watch how cool the stars are. I never
was long enough in one in my life to get over feeling sad that
soon it would stop, an’ I’d have to be off and out. Would you get
one--would you?”

The duke raised his hand to the hansom, and it crawled toward
them dubiously. The small dancing creature on the pavement looked
frankly incredible, both to the horse and the driver, but the large
black one looked as though it knew its mind. The two of them got in
quickly, and the small one tilted back her shining head against the
great one’s shoulder, sighing rapturously, while the black cloak
fell open, and her skirts frothed about her in a manner scandalous
to behold.

“Where to?” inquired the cabby with severity.

“Oh, what matter at all where to?” cried the incredible small one.
“A hundred miles or so any way at all, just so we can see those
stars go out; they’re that cool and calm it’s an aggravation.”

“Drive straight ahead--a hundred miles,” said the great one in so
terrifying a tone that the cabby gave one sharp pant and started on
his pilgrimage. Roaring drunk or plain barmy, the large occupant of
the cab was all too plainly one to be humoured.

“Would a hundred miles bring us to dawn?” inquired the smaller
lunatic. “Oh, I’d rather a dawn than a parade any day there is,
though sleeping’s a grand thing, too.”

“_When will you marry me?_” demanded the duke.

“We must be that wise and cool we’ll put the stars to shame,” she
said dreamily. “How many days would there be in a year? I’ve no
head for figures at all.”

“A year?” protested the stricken duke fiercely. “Three hundred and
sixty-five days? You couldn’t--you couldn’t----”

Biddy raised her hand to the silver laces above her heart with the
strangest little look of wonder.

“Three hundred and sixty-five?” she whispered. “No more than that?
No more than that--for sure?”

“No more?” he cried. “Why, it’s a lifetime--it’s eternity----”

“Ah, and so it is,” said his Biddy. “Well, then, let’s be wise as
the stars--and wait till morning. Father Leary, he’s an old man,
and he wakes at dawn; ’tis himself that says so. He’ll marry us
then if I have to do penance for the rest of my days. Three hundred
and sixty-five, you say? You’re right--oh, you’re right. ’Tis a
lifetime!”

And so at dawn Biddy O’Rourke became the Duchess of Bolingham, and
the greatest scandal of the century broke over a waking city.
Things like that don’t happen, you say--no, things like that don’t
happen, except in real life or in fairy tales. But if you had asked
the duke or his duchess, they could have told you that this was
real life--and a fairy tale.

They drove down to Gray Courts behind a pair of bright bays
called Castor and Pollux that same day, in a high trap of black
and scarlet, with fawn-coloured cushions. The duke drove, and the
duchess sat perched beside him in a great red postillion’s coat
from Redfern with a ruby ring as big as the Pope’s on her finger
and a hat no larger than a poppy tilted over one eye. It had a
little red feather in it that wagged violently every time the bays
lifted a foot, and Her Grace’s tongue wagged more violently than
the feather.

“Is it a castle you live in, darlin’?”

“It’ll be a castle once you’re in it. Who ever heard of a Princess
that didn’t live in a castle?”

“Is it terrible big and black and grand, like you?”

“Terrible--you couldn’t tell us apart.”

“Do your great sons live there all by themselves?”

“Oh, rather not. They live there with two tutors and a trainer and
an old nurse and four aunts, besides all the hounds and horses
and grooms and jockeys and farriers that they can wedge into the
stables.”

“The Saints keep us!” invoked Biddy with heartfelt piety. “Was it
four aunts you said?”

“Oh, God forgive me, I clean forgot ’em!” The duke’s cry was quite
as heartfelt, but it lacked piety. “No, I swear that’s the truth.
I sent a messenger down this morning with a letter for Noll, but
not one of the lot of them entered my head--Biddy, Biddy, if I’d
remembered, I’d have taken you somewhere else.”

“Ah, well, it can’t be helped, darlin’. It’s glad news and golden
that I’ve driven the thought of four grand ladies clear out of your
head, and it’s small fault of yours that so much as a whisper of
the word aunt makes the soles of my feet grow cold and the hairs of
my head rise up on end. If you’d known my father’s sister Dasheen
you’d never wonder! Maybe the four of these are nice old bodies?”

“And maybe they’re not!” remarked the duke. “Gad, but I’d give a
thousand pound to have them hear you calling them nice old bodies.
Clarissa, now----”

He gave such a shout of laughter that the off bay swerved and Biddy
had to clutch at his sleeve to keep from falling.

“Are they just young aunts then?” she inquired hopefully.

The duke let the bays fend for themselves while he kissed the
ridiculous hand and the dancing feather and both of the small
corners of her smile.

“Beautiful, wait till you see them! They’re not aunts at all,
Heaven help us--they’re sisters! One of their noses would make four
of yours, and every last one of them is more like Queen Elizabeth
in her prime than any one going around England these days. They
have fine bones and high heads and eyes like ripe hearts of icicles
and tongues like serpents’ tails dipped in vinegar.”

“Have they now!” remarked Her Grace pensively. “Well, ’twill not be
dull at Gray Courts, I can tell that from here. Was Elizabeth the
cross heathen that snipped the head off the pretty light one home
from France?”

“I wish I’d had your history teacher,” said the duke with emphasis.
“I spent years on end learning less about the ladies that you’ve
put in a dozen words. I shouldn’t wonder if cross heathens
described the lot as well as anything else. I was a cross heathen
myself till half-past nine last night.”

“Never say it!” cried his Biddy. “You’ve a heart of gold and a
tongue of silver, and I’m the girl that knows. ’Tis likely they’ll
love me no better than the cross one loved the pretty one, then?”

“’Tis likely they’ll love you less,” prophesied the duke
accurately, “since they can’t snip off your head!”

Biddy’s laughter was a flight of silver birds.

“Then since it’s sorrow we’re goin’ to,” she begged, “let’s go
easy. Make the horses step soft and slow, darlin’; ’tis the
prettiest evening in all the world, and I’m that high up I can see
clear over the great green hedges into the wee green gardens. I
doubt if it’ll smell any better in Heaven!”

“I doubt if it’ll smell half as sweet,” he said. “If we go slow
we’ll miss our dinner.”

“Ah, let’s miss our dinner!” she begged. “Did we not eat all
those little fat quail and those great fat peaches for our lunch?
I’d rather sup on the lights that’ll be coming out behind the
window-panes while we pass, and the stars that’ll slip through the
sky while we’re not looking, and the smell of gilly-flowers and
lavender warm against the walls. Maybe if we go slow, we might have
a slip of new moon for dessert--maybe if we go slower than that,
the horses will know what it’s all about, and let you hold one of
my hands.”

And so the horses did, and so he did, and it was long past dinner
when the duke and his duchess drove through the gates of Gray
Courts, and swept proudly up the long alley with its great beech
trees to the door where grooms and butlers and housekeepers and
maids and men enough to start a republic came running sedately to
greet them. The duke stood them off with a gesture and held out
both his hands to help his duchess down from her throne, and she
laid her finger-tips in his and reached the threshold high on her
toes.

“This,” said the duke with a pride that made his former arrogance
seem humility, “is Her Grace.”

He swung her through the carved doors before the most skillful of
them could do more than gape or sketch a curtsey--in the great
stone hall with the flagged floor and the two fireplaces built
by giants to burn oak trees she looked smaller than a child and
brighter than a candle. She stood smiling as warmly at the cold
and hollow suits of armour, with their chilled gleam of steel and
gold and silver and the jaded plumes drooping in their helmets, as
though they were her brothers, and the dun-coloured hound lying
with his nose on his paws blinked twice, and rose slowly, in his
huge grace, and strolled to where she stood gleaming, thrusting his
great head beneath her hand.

“Oh, the wonder he is!” she cried. “What will I call him?”

“His name’s Merlin,” the duke told her, and he put his arm about
her in full sight of the stunned household. “He knows a witch as
well as the one he was named for. Layton, where are my sisters?”

“Their Ladyships have retired to their rooms, Your Grace.”

“Good!” replied His Grace distinctly. “Where are my sons?”

“Their Lordships drove over late this afternoon for a dinner and
theatricals at the Marquis of Dene’s, Your Grace.”

“Better!” said His Grace. “Then shall we go to our room, Biddy?
We’ve not eaten; send some claret and fruit and cold fowl--what
else, Biddy?”

“Some little cakes stuffed full with raisins, if there’re any
about,” suggested Her Grace hopefully.

“Cakes,” commanded the Duke of Bolingham in a voice that would have
raised cakes from the stone flags. “Will you have a maid, Biddy?”

“Whatever for?” inquired Biddy with candid interest. “I’ve still
the use of all ten of my fingers, and you’d be there to help if I
broke one, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” said the duke, his arm closing faster about her, his voice
shaken. “No maid. Is the room ready, Layton?”

“Quite ready, Your Grace.” Layton seized the great black
dressing-case with the gold locks and the little snakeskin jewel
case that Biddy had pounced on in Bond Street that morning, and
James swung up the huge pigskin bags of His Grace, and Potter
appeared from somewhere with fruit and wine, and Durkin from
nowhere with a silver basket of small cakes, and a very young
gentleman called Tunbridge appeared with candles that were larger
than he. The duke and the duchess followed this procession up the
dark splendour of the stairs, with Merlin padding superbly behind
his witch. When they reached the landing the procession swung to
the right.

“Here!” called Bolingham. “Which room?”

“The Damask Room, Your Grace.”

“No,” said His Grace. “No.” He did not raise his voice, but his
fingers crushed down desperately on the light ones lying in his.
“We’ll use the Blue Room.”

The agitated voice of the housekeeper cried, “Oh, Your Grace, it’s
not ready!”

“Make it ready--flowers, candles, linen. Be quick.”

They were quick. Feet ran, hands flew, while the duke and his
duchess stood waiting in the room in which a king had slept and a
prince had died, and which for a hundred years had stood empty of
life, save when some awed visitor tiptoed across the threshold,
marvelling at its more than royal beauty--its walls stretched
with velvet blue and deep as night, its painted beams, its hooded
fireplace, its great bed around which the velvet curtains swept,
brave with their golden Tudor roses; quick hands now brought other
roses, wine-red in silver bowls, to sweeten the air, and sticks
of wood to light a fire to warm it, for even August turned chilly
in that magnificence; they spread a gay feast before the flames
and fine linen on the bed; they brought high candelabra wrought of
silver, more of them and more of them, until the shadows wavered
and danced, and the new duchess clapped her hands and danced, too.

“That enough?” the duke asked her.

“Oh, ’tis enough to light the way from here to the pole! I’d not
have said there were so many candles in all the world.”

“Right,” said the duke to his servitors briefly. “That’s all, then.
Good-night.”

And the quick hands and the quick feet were gone, and the duke was
left alone with his duchess.

“It’s not too cold?” he asked.

“No, no!” she said. “It’s fine and warm.”

“It’s not too dark?”

“No, no--it’s fine and bright!”

“My little heart, you don’t hate it? You’re not afraid?”

“Afraid?” cried his heart, alight with laughter. “Afraid with you
by me? Am I mad?”

He knelt at that and put his arms about her. Even kneeling his
black head was higher than her bright one.

“It’s I who am afraid. Biddy, what if I made you stop smiling?
Biddy, Biddy, don’t ever stop smiling!”

“Never fear!” she cried. “Never fear, my dear love. I’ll never in
this world stop smiling----” She caught her breath, and shook her
curls, and laid her laughing lips gayly and bravely against his.
“Nor in the next one, either!” said Her Grace.

She kept her word. That shining mischief of hers never
wavered--nothing touched it, not the frozen hatred of the four
outraged ladies or the surly insolence of the three dark boys, or
the indifferent disdain of the county neighbours, or the blank
indignation of the court. He watched over her with terror and rage
in his heart; they, they to scorn his miracle!

That first dinner, with the ladies Pamela, Clarissa, Maude, and
Charlotte, looking down their high noses at the radiant intruder,
pouring out venom, poison, and vinegar as freely as wine----

“Say the word,” he told her through his teeth, safe in the
sanctuary of their dark and beautiful room, “and the four of them
shall walk to London!”

“Well, if they crawled there, ’twould be no more than they
deserve!” said Her Grace with decision. “The cross faces they
have, and the mean tongues! They’d wear the patience out of a
Saint.”

“They can start packing now!” he cried, and made for the door.

“No, no!” Her laughter checked him like a hand. “What does it
matter at all, since I’m no Saint? I’ll not need patience; all I’ll
need is grace to keep a straight face and a civil tongue. Let them
be, darlin’; ’tis a thousand pities my Aunt Dasheen died without
laying eyes on them. They’re like her own sisters. Did no one ever
give that fine Roddy of yours a good cuff?”

“I’ll give him two and a strapping,” said the duke. “The glowering
young cub!”

“You’d never steal such pleasure for yourself,” she implored. “In
no time at all they’ll be gone to their schools and colleges, and
I’ll set what mind I have to growing tall enough to reach their
ears if I stand on my toes. Would you like me better if I reached
up higher?”

Their world was in that room--its four blue walls held all their
heaven and earth. From its windows they saw dawns break and nights
fall; when they crossed its threshold they stepped under a spell
that held them safe from all disaster. No one had ever loved any
one as he loved his little golden duchess; sometimes he smiled
gravely and indulgently when he thought of the poor travesties
that passed in the world for adoration. Dante and the girl that
crossed the bridge in her wine-coloured gown--tragic and absurd
to call that love, which was not strong enough to win a kiss!
Paolo and Francesca stealing hot glances over a closed book in
a garden--blasphemous to think that love could come clothed in
secrecy and guilt. And those frantic, desperate children of the
Capulets and Montagues--was love, then, something shot with blood
and tears? No, no, love was shot with beauty and with mirth--love
was his Biddy, dancing through darkness to his arms.

When some unshirkable duty called him from her to the London that
they had forgotten he would possess his soul with what patience he
might until the doors of Gray Courts opened once more, and before
the doors had swung to behind his voice would ring out--

“Where is Her Grace?”

They never had need to tell him; before the words were off his lips
he would hear her light feet, running to reach him across the long
halls, the dark stairs.

When winter hung the world in silver frost they piled the fire
higher and drew the curtains closer and sat wrapped warm in
dreaming happiness while the winds roared and lashed over the
world.

“Shall I take you to London?” he asked her.

“London?” she cried in wonder. “Oh, whatever for?”

“You’re not dull here? You’re not lonely?”

“Dull? With you? Lonely--lonely with you?”

After awhile she lifted her head and locked her fingers fast in
his, and asked,

“When is your birthday?”

“In July--the twenty-fifth. Why?”

“I’ll have a grand present for you,” said Her Grace. “A baby. A
baby that’ll have a yellow head and a twinkle in both his eyes. A
baby that’ll grow tall enough to thrash the wickedness out of his
black brothers and have sense enough to laugh instead of doing it.”

He bowed his head over the linked fingers.

“Biddy, what more will you give me, you who have given me all the
world?”

“’Tis a small thing,” she whispered. “July. That will be a year
since you came to see me dance?”

“A year, my heart.”

“How many days are there in a year, did you say?”

“Three hundred and sixty-five.”

“A day--a day is a poor short thing,” said Her Grace. “If I had
a wish, I’d wish them longer. ’Tis cold in here, with the wind
roaring down the chimney. Hold me closer--hold me fast.”

And with spring her wish was granted, and the days were longer; not
long enough to hold the joy they poured into them--but filled to
the brim with pale sunlight and primroses and hawthorn hedges. And
it was June, and they were longer still, flooded with golden warmth
and the smell of yellow roses and life and magic, and the taste
of honey. And it was July, and it was his birthday--and the world
stood still.

Her Grace gave him the yellow-headed baby for a birthday present.
When they brought him his son he looked at him with strange eyes
and turned his face away and asked them in a voice that none would
have known,

“How is she now?”

The great doctors who had come hurrying from London shook their
heads, and were grave and pompous and learned.

“Bad. Her heart was in a shocking condition--she had not told you?”

No--no, she had not told him.

“Well, we must hope; we must hope.”

But soon they could no longer hope; soon hope was gone. For all
their dignity, for all their learning, they could only give her
drugs to make it easier to die; they could only prop her up
against the pillows in the great Tudor bed, and smooth the dark
coverlet, and tiptoe from the room, leaving her to her duke. She
sat there still and small, her hands on his black head where
he knelt beside her, with so little breath left to tell him of
her love that she sought the shortest words, she who had been a
spendthrift of them.

“Darlin’.” He did not stir, even at that. “Never grieve. I’ve known
it a great while; they told me in London before you came that
’twould be no more than a year. And my Aunt Dasheen, she was wise
before they. ‘Wed at seventeen, dead at eighteen’----”

“Biddy,” he whispered, “I’ve killed you--I’ve killed you.”

“Oh, what talk is this? You, who gave me my life? I never minded
the dying--’twas only when I thought how lonely it would be,
with no one caring whether I came or went. I’ve forgotten what
loneliness is with you by me. Look up at me.”

He raised his head--and her eyes were dancing.

“Has it yellow hair?”

“Yes.”

“Will you teach it to laugh?”

“Biddy--Biddy----”

“’Twill be dull in Heaven without you,” she said. “But ’twill be
gay when you come.” She leaned toward him, her lips curved to
mischief. “Wait till they tell my Aunt Dasheen--Saint Peter himself
will have to laugh. ‘Woman, there’s someone just come asking after
you--a little one, even on her toes. She says her name is Biddy and
she’s Duchess of Bolingham----’”

The faint voice trailed to airy mirth, and with that music echoing
still about her Her Grace closed her dancing eyes, and closed her
laughing lips, and turned her bright head away and was gone, as
lightly and swiftly as she had come.




THE HONOURABLE TONY


“You actually mean to tell me that you don’t want to get out of
this dripping hole?”

“My dear old ass, why on earth should I want to get out of it?”

Anthony Christopher Stoningham Calvert faced the incredulous glare
of the freckle-faced young gentleman from Ohio with engaging
candour. Four years of soaking in tropical pest holes and rioting
from Monte Carlo to Rio, from Shanghai to Singapore, since they had
met, and yet there he sat, sprawled out full length in his great
cane chair, as cool and shameless and unconquerably youthful as
though he had just been sent down from Oxford for the first time.
Even in the light that filtered in through the cane shutters, green
and strange as the pallid glow that washes through aquariums, it
was clear that time had found no power to touch that long grace,
that bright head with its ruffled crop of short hair, those gay
eyes, wide set and mischievous in the brown young face, those
absurd dimples, carved deep into the lean curve of the cheek. Young
Ledyard gave a bark of outraged protest, his pleasant face flushed
and exasperated under its thatch of sandy hair.

“You mean it? You aren’t coming back with me?”

“Not for all the gold in the Indies, my dear kid--or out of them
either, if it comes to that.” The Honourable Tony, as he had been
dubbed by a scandalized and diverted public, grinned alluringly
through the vaguely sinister light at his onetime comrade at arms.
“The whole thing is absolutely ripping, I tell you, and the only
thing that I ask is to spend the next sixty years doing precisely
what I’m doing now.”

“I don’t believe you,” rejoined his baffled guest flatly. “Why
in God’s name should you want to rot your life away in a little
backwater Hell, when I can give you a first-rate job twenty-four
hours after we land in America?”

“But, my dear fellow, I wouldn’t have your job as a birthday gift.
You may be the heir apparent to the greatest rubber business in
the whole jolly globe, but try to bear in mind that you see before
you the chief, sole, and official British Imperial Adviser to the
fattest little Sultan in Asia--who incidentally eats up every word
of wisdom that falls from his adviser’s lips and sits up and begs
for more, let me tell you.”

“And let me tell _you_ that it’s common gossip in every gutter in
Singapore that your Sultan’s a black-hearted scoundrel who’s only
waiting for a chance to double-cross England and do you one in the
eye.”

“What happens to be the current gutter gossip about his adviser?”
inquired that gentleman blandly.

Ledyard’s jaw looked suddenly aggressive.

“Never mind what it happens to be. What I want to know is why your
friend Bhakdi isn’t back in his dirty little capital trying to
straighten out some of the messes he’s got himself into instead of
squatting up here in the jungle hunting tigers?”

“Because his invaluable adviser advises him to stay precisely where
he is,” explained the Honourable Tony cheerfully. “Just between us,
there are several nasty bits of international complications and
one or two strictly domestic ones that make a protracted absence
from the native heath highly advisable--oh, highly. Besides, you’d
hardly have us trot back without a tiger, would you? I assure you
that so far we haven’t bagged a solitary one. Not a tiger, Bill,
not a tiger!”

“Oh, for the love of the Lord, shut up! I tell you this whole
thing’s a rotten, ugly, dangerous business, and I didn’t come
crawling up through Hades to have you turn it into a joke. I can’t
stay jawing about it, and you know it--it’s going to be a darned
close squeak to make connections with the steamer as it is. Are you
coming or are you not?”

“I are not. Do quiet down and tell me why it is that you’re totally
unable to distinguish between comic opera and melodrama? This
whole performance is the purest farce, I swear! Wait till you see
his Imperial Majesty--as nice a buttery, pompous little blighter
as you’d want to lay eyes on, who’s spent six months at Cambridge
and comes to heel like a spaniel if you tell him that anything
in the world ‘isn’t done.’ He has a solid gold bicycle and four
unhappy marriages and a body-guard with bright green panties and
mother-of-pearl handles to their automatics! You wouldn’t expect
even a Chinaman to take that seriously, would you?”

“I should think you’d go mad in your head trying to get along with
a bounder who doesn’t know the first thing in the world about your
code of standards or----”

“William, you are the most frightful donkey! The only code that
I’ve recognized since I pattered off the ancestral estate is the
jolly dot-dash thing that they use for telegrams. I’ve finally
got our Bhakdi to the point where he drills his troops in pure
British and plays a cracking good game of auction bridge without
cheating--civilization’s greatest triumph in the Near or Far East.
Personally, I ask no more of it!”

Ledyard mopped his brow despairingly. The dim room with its snowy
matting and pale green cushions looked cool enough, but the heat
outside would have penetrated a refrigerator. Just the other side
of those protecting shutters the sun was beating down on the quiet
waters until they glared back like burning silver--the tufts of
palm and bamboo were hanging like so many dejected jade banners
in the breathless air--the ridiculous little houses were huddled
clumsily together on their ungainly piles, shrinking unhappily
under their huge hats of nippa thatch.

“It’s a filthy, poisonous hole!” he protested fiercely. “It beats
me why you can’t see it. If anything went wrong here, you wouldn’t
have a white man in a hundred miles to turn to. You needn’t laugh.
There’s nothing so howlingly funny about it. What about that Scotch
engineer who was so everlastingly intimate with your precious
Bhakdi’s next-door neighbour?”

“Well, what about him? The poor chap fell down a shaft and broke
his neck.”

“Oh, he did, did he? Well, believe me, that’s not what they say
in Singapore! Calvert, for God’s _sake_, get out of this infernal
place. Every inch of it smells of death and damnation. How any
one who calls himself an English gentleman can stick it for a
minute----”

“But I don’t call myself an English gentleman,” the Honourable Tony
assured him earnestly. “God forbid! I call myself an out-and-out
waster exiled for ever from the Mother Country by a cruel and
powerful elder brother. The only trick in it is that I’m simply
cuckoo with ecstasy over the entire situation. Not according
to Kipling, what? No, the glittering prospect of spending the
remaining years of a misspent life in the largest rubber factory in
Ohio leaves me considerably colder than ice.”

“I suggested Ohio because I happen to be in charge of that plant
myself,” returned Ledyard stiffly. “If you’d rather have a go at
one of the others----”

“But, my good child, it seems impossible to make you understand
that the factory has not been built for which I would exchange
one single baked banana soaked in rum and moonlight. Think of the
simply hideous sacrifices that I’d make, can’t you?--taking advice
instead of being paid good round guineas for giving it--working for
one beastly hour after another instead of slipping from one golden
minute to the next--drinking nasty chemical messes in constant
terror of sudden death or prison bars, instead of tossing off
bumpers and flagons and buckets of delectable fluids that smell
like flowers and shine like jewels--dragging around to the most
appalling festivals where pampered little females tip up their
ridiculous powdered noses and distribute two minutes of their
precious dances as though they were conferring the Order of the
Garter, instead of----”

Ledyard looked suddenly three shades hotter beneath his freckles.

“Thanks--glad to know how much you enjoyed your visit.”

“I enjoyed every minute of it to the point of explosion, as you
are thoroughly well aware. If I live to ninety-two, I shall
remember the excellent yarns that your father spun over those
incredibly good cigars and that simply immortal corn pudding, and
the shoulders on the little red-headed creature in the black dress
at the Country Club--good Lord, William, the shoulders on that
creature! After four years of not especially pretty smells and
not especially pretty noises, what do you think that those July
evenings under the awnings on your veranda meant to a God-forsaken
flying chap back from the wars, William?”

William looked frankly unappeased.

“A hell of a lot of difference it makes what I think! I know one
God-forsaken flying chap who thought it wasn’t good enough for
him, by a long shot. Not while he could hop off and rot his soul
out in a water-logged bamboo shack in Asia!”

The owner of the bamboo shack settled deeper into his chair with a
graceless and engaging grin.

“My dear chap, it was Heaven, pure and simple--but a dash too pure
and simple for some of us. Every man his own Heaven, what? Well,
you’re sitting in mine at the present. Of course it mightn’t suit
any one with even an elementary code of principles, but having none
of any kind or description it suits me down to the ground and up to
the sky.”

“Oh, bunk!” commented Ledyard with fervent irritation. “You’ve
got all the principles you need; do you think that I’d have come
chasing up this unspeakable river in everything from a motorboat to
a raft after any howling blackguard?”

“Well, it’s rather one on you, isn’t it, dear boy? Because it’s
so absolutely what you’ve up and gone and done--though through no
earthly fault of mine, you know! Rather not. Didn’t I spend four
jolly busy years trying to get it through your thick skull that
I was ninety-nine different varieties of blighter, and that nice
little American kids with freckles on their noses shouldn’t come
trotting around my propellers?”

“Hey, how do you get that way?” The nice little American kid
raised his voice in poignant irritation. “Kid! If any one ever
took the trouble to give you two looks they’d think you’d bounced
straight out of rompers into long trousers without waiting for
knickerbockers. Kid!”

“Old in iniquity, William, old in iniquity,” explained the
Honourable Tony blithely. “Physically I grant that I’m fairly in
the pink, but morally I’m edging rapidly into senile decay. I
pledge you my word, which is worth considerably less than nothing,
that I haven’t as many morals as I have side whiskers. And even
you, my dear old chap, will be willing to admit that I don’t go in
heavily for side whiskers. Take a long piercing look.”

Ledyard scowled wretchedly at the impish countenance blandly
presented for inspection.

“The trouble with you is that you simply can’t take it in that
any one on the whole bally globe could prefer a Bengal tiger to a
British lion and a bird of paradise to an American eagle. You see
before you a foul monstrosity who would trade all the British Isles
for twenty yards of jungle, and gloat over his bargain. Have a
cigarette?”

“No, I won’t have a cigarette. You make me so sick and tired with
all that jaw about what a devil you are that I could yell. Once and
for all, are you going to drop it and come back with me?”

“Once and for all I am not going to move one quarter of an inch.
Stop jawing yourself for a minute, and try to see it my way. If
you’d been chivvied about for your entire life by a lot of frenzied
vestals for aunts who were trying to guide you to what they
unfortunately considered grace, and three simply appalling bounders
for brothers who set up the most frightful howl over the Bolingham
name and the Bolingham honour and the Bolingham fortune every time
the youngest member of the Bolingham family picked a primrose,
you’d good and well think you were in Heaven if you could get out
of earshot of their ghastly voices.”

“Damn it all!” cried young Ledyard violently. “You haven’t got
the nerve to sit up there and tell me that you call this filthy
water-hole Heaven?”

“Oh, I haven’t, haven’t I?” The Honourable Tony regarded the
flushed countenance with pensive amusement. “I say, you Americans
do have the most amazing cheek! Who ever asked you to come puffing
and blowing into my own particular earthly Paradise and start in
slanging it all over the shop? Filthy water-hole, by Gad! You won’t
recognize Heaven when you have the milk and gold and harps and
honey stuck under your silly nose.”

Ledyard rose sharply to his feet.

“All right, I’ll be off, then, and not waste any more of the
valuable time that you’re employing so profitably. As you suggest,
no one asked me to hurl myself into your affairs, and you’ve
managed to make it good and clear that I was a lunatic to think
that you’d take advice or help from me or any other well-meaning
fool on the face of the earth. If you’ll get hold of one of those
black swine that make up your circle of friends, these days, and
tell them to get my men and the raft----”

“My dear old chap!” The Honourable Tony was at Ledyard’s side in
two great strides, his arm was about Ledyard’s shoulders in the
old, remembered gesture of gay affection. “For God’s sake, do try
to remember that I am simply a feather-headed goat who can’t for
the life of him say three consecutive inoffensive syllables--I give
you my word that I was born with both feet in my mouth--actually!
As for your taking the time and trouble to come tooting up that
frightful river in order to throw me a life-line, I could sit down
and howl with emotion whenever I think of it--no, I swear that’s
the truth! Do sit down again like a good chap--it’s absolute rot
to talk about going before sundown; the sun would simply melt you
down like a tallow candle. Besides, the jetty-eyed companion of
your travels isn’t back from her interview with His Majesty, and
you can hardly abandon her to our tender mercies--oh, well, hardly!
I say, didn’t you gather that she was going to romp straight back
to our sheltering wings as soon as she’d presented the heart-wrung
petition?”

“If you believe two words the lying little devil says, you’re a
worse fool than I am!” said Ledyard gloomily.

The Honourable Tony shouted his delight.

“Where’s all this hundred per cent. American chivalry? What an
absolutely shocking way to talk about a perfect lady who touchingly
relies on your being a perfect gentleman. ‘Meestair Billee Ledyar’,
allaways, allaways he conduck heemself like a mos’ pairfick
genteelman!’”

He shouted again at the sight of Meestair Billee Ledyar’s revolted
countenance.

“Calvert, when I think what I’ve been through with that beastly
limpet, jabbering all day and hysterics all night--it’s nothing
short of a miracle that I didn’t bash her head against the anchor
and feed her to the crocodiles. Who the devil is she, anyway?”

“Daisy de Vallorosa? My dear chap, why ask me?”

“Well, I do ask you. She seems to know who you are all right!”

“Does she, indeed? Upon my word, that’s interesting!”

He cocked his head attentively, guileless and inscrutable.

“Yes, she does indeed. Come on--let me in on this! Did she honestly
come up here to get help for a brother dying in the tin mines, or
is this a rendezvous that the two of you fixed up in Singapore?”

His host looked shocked but magnanimous.

“William, William--no, frankly, you appall me! What a sordid mind
you have under that sunny exterior; out upon you! I never make
rendezvous--absolutely not.”

“Well, she swore that she’d met you and Bhakdi at a special concert
while he was visiting Singapore.”

“Oh, extremely special,” murmured the Honourable Tony, a
reminiscent gleam in his eye. “Rather! She sang some little songs
that were quite as special as anything I’ve ever heard in my life,
and at one time or another I’ve heard a good few. Bhakdi was most
frightfully bowled over; he gave her two hammered gold buckles
and a warm invitation to drop in on him at any time that she was
in the neighbourhood. I rather fancy that that’s what’s at the
bottom of all this; taking one thing with another, I’m inclined to
believe that Necessity became a Mother again when our little Daisy
barged into you, and that the expiring brother is simply one of her
inventive offspring. Hence, death and the tin mines! By the way,
just how _did_ the young female barge into you?”

“She had the next seat on the train from Singapore, curse her!”
replied Ledyard vindictively. “And she sat there as good and quiet
as pie, squeaking out, ‘Yes, I sank you’ and ‘No, I sank you’ every
time I asked her if she wanted the window up, or the shades down
or--or anything. I tell you butter wouldn’t have melted in her
nasty little painted mouth! Then when we found that you and Bhakdi
had lit out after tigers, and I decided that I’d just have time
before the next boat to hire a crew and hunt you down, she went
off into twenty-one different kinds of hysterics until I promised
to bring her along, too. ‘Five meenit--only five small lil’ meenit
to spik weeth the gr-reat, the good Sultan, and the gr-reat, nobl’
Honable Meestaire Tonee Calver’, and her Manuelo would be restore
once more to her arms.’ When I think that I fell for that I could
choke down a quart of carbolic straight.”

“Oh, I can quite see how it came about--quite, quite!” murmured the
Honourable Tony, pensively sympathetic.

“Believe me, you can’t see the half of it!” Ledyard ran a frenzied
hand through the sandy hair. “Listen, how about getting away now,
before she turns up?”

“Well, upon my word, you unprincipled young devil, I’ve yet to hear
a cooler proposition! Damme if you don’t curdle the blood--damme
if you don’t. Are you asking me to sit by and condone a callous
desertion of this young female to the lures of a wily and dissolute
potentate?”

Ledyard faced his delighted inquisitor unabashed.

“Oh, go on--I’ll bet that’s what she’s after--and if you ask me,
he’s plenty good enough for her. She’s probably a cousin of his;
any one with all that fuzzy black hair and those black saucer eyes
and nasty glittery little teeth----”

“Wrong again, dear boy. The lady is undeniably the legitimate
offspring of Lady Scott’s English maid and a Portuguese wine
merchant, born in Madeira. She is also a British subject, being the
legitimate widow of the late Tommy Potts, one-time pianist of the
Imperial Doll Baby Girls.”

“Widow?” demanded Ledyard incredulously.

“Widow and orphan, William. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Tommy, alas, passed away while they were touring New Zealand, in a
distressingly complicated attack of appendicitis and D. T.’s. She
didn’t tell you?”

“No, she did not tell me,” replied William somewhat aggressively.
“See here, how do you happen to know so much about this Portuguese
Empire Doll Baby?”

“A trifling matter of a passport, William. Purely as a business
matter it became my painful duty to excavate the lady’s buried
past.”

Ledyard eyed him suspiciously.

“I believe she’s gone on you and you know it,” he said gloomily.
“Anyway, if she doesn’t turn up pretty soon, I’m going to pull out,
and that’s that. You and Bhakdi can fight it out between the two of
you--I’m through chaperoning Daisy de Vallorosa Potts from now on.”

“Sorry, but you’re going to have to chaperon her clear back to
Singapore,” the Honourable Tony assured him inflexibly. “If there’s
one thing that I simply cannot and will not stick it’s cheap
powder, and if there are two things that I simply cannot and will
not stick--it’s cheap perfume. The less they cost, the more they
use. Lord, Lord, the perfume that little hussy uses!”

“If she’s a British subject, it’s your job to look out for her.
She’s under your protection.”

“My dear kid, I wouldn’t disturb this enchanting existence by
lifting a finger to protect Queen Victoria from Don Juan.”

“Well, she’d better step lively,” remarked her late escort
ominously. “I’m not joking, you know--if I don’t make connections
with that boat in Singapore, I’m as good as disinherited! My
Governor’s not so gone on you that he’d consider you any excuse for
missing two boats, you know.”

“Not for missing one, you young ass.” The gay eyes dwelt on him
deeply for a moment, mocking and affectionate. “Your very able
parent was one fellow who never entertained any illusions as to my
intrinsic merit, wasn’t he?”

Ledyard drew a long breath, his face a little pale.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “he was. That was one of the things I wanted
to talk to you about. It’s hard to talk to you about anything like
that, Calvert!”

“Like what?”

The tone was hardly encouraging for all its amiability, but young
Ledyard pushed doggedly ahead.

“Like that--anything serious or intimate or real. You make it
darned difficult, let me tell you.”

“Then why do it?”

“Oh, not because I want to!” His angry, tired young face bore
unmistakable testimony to that. “Believe me, if I were consulting
my own pleasure I’d have told you to go to the devil the first time
you tried any of that condescending impertinence of yours on me.”

“Is it beside the mark to ask you just whose pleasure you _are_
consulting, then?”

Young Ledyard set his teeth hard.

“Pattie’s,” he said, very distinctly.

The Honourable Tony did not stir, but the eyes that he fixed on
Pattie’s brother went suddenly and incredibly black. After a long
pause he repeated, evenly and courteously,

“Pattie’s?”

“Yes, Pattie’s. That’s half of why I came--the other half, if you
want to know, is because I’m fool enough to care more about you
than any other man I ever met--than any other two men.”

The wide eyes were suddenly blue again.

“Thanks,” said the Honourable Tony, and there was something
startlingly sweet in his smile. “Thanks awfully. It’s quite mutual,
you know--any three men, I should say offhand. Suppose we simply
let it go at that? And do try one of these cigarettes; they really
are first-rate.”

“I can’t let it go at that, I tell you--I wish to the Lord I could.
Pattie had it all out with Dad, and she made me swear that I’d run
you down when I got out here and bring you back. She said that if
I couldn’t work it any other way I was to tell you that she said
‘Please.’ I’m at the end of my rope, Calvert--and Pattie says
‘Please.’”

The Honourable Tony raised his hand sharply, staring through
Pattie’s brother as though he saw someone else. Possibly he did see
someone else--someone as clear and cool in that dim, hot room as
a little spring, someone who stood there very small and straight
with young Ledyard’s sandy hair clasping her brows like a wreath of
autumn leaves, and young Ledyard’s gray eyes turned to two dancing
stars, and young Ledyard’s freckles trailing a faint gold powder
across the very tip of her tilted nose--someone as brave and honest
as a little boy and as wistful and gentle as a little girl, who
stood clasping her hands together tightly, and said “Please.”

“No, by God!” cried the Honourable Tony loudly. “No!”

“Don’t yell like that.” Ledyard rapped the words out fiercely.
“I’m not deaf--all you have to say is ‘no’ once. If it’s any
satisfaction to you to know it, I’m through.”

He rose to his feet and his host rose, too, swiftly, catching at
his arm.

“Rather got the wind up, haven’t we, old thing? No, don’t jerk
away; it’s simply rotten bad manners, and throws me off my stride
completely when I’m preparing to do the thing in the grand
manner--apologies, and _amendes honorables_ and every mortal trick
in the bag. You’re absolutely right, you know. It’s far too hot to
start shouting, and I swear that I’ll keep quiet if you will. We
might toss off a stirrup cup of quinine, what?”

“I believe that you’d laugh at a corpse,” said Ledyard fiercely.

The Honourable Tony eyed him for a moment strangely--and then
shrugged his shoulders.

“At a corpse--exactly. And there you are!”

“Well, where am I? D’you want me to tell Pattie that all you have
to say to her is ‘No, by God’?”

“I want you to tell Pattie just exactly nothing whatever; say that
I was off tiger hunting with the Sultan, and that you couldn’t get
track of me to save your soul.”

“Thanks; I don’t go in for lies--more especially not with Pattie.”

“I see.” The Honourable Tony, his hands deep in his pockets,
evidently saw something not entirely flattering, judging from the
curl to his lip. After a minute, however, he dismissed it with
another careless shrug. “Oh, spare your conscience by all means.
Give Pattie my love, then, and tell her that I’d like most awfully
to run up and wipe her out at tennis, but that I’m so indispensable
here that I can’t possibly make it.”

“That all?”

“Quite all, thanks.”

“But, good Lord, I tell you that she _wants_ you----”

“You misunderstood her.”

“Don’t be a fool. She told me----”

The Honourable Tony jerked forward suddenly, his fingers biting
into Ledyard’s arm, his low voice savage as a whip.

“Drop it, will you? _Drop it!_” At the sight of the blank and
stricken amazement in the other’s eyes he broke off sharply, his
fingers relaxing their grip. “Oh, Lord love us, we’re both fit for
a madhouse! Throw some water over me--pound my head against the
wall--do something but stand there staring like another lunatic.
Pull your jaw back, there’s a good kid.”

Ledyard stared at him wretchedly.

“But, Calvert, I swear that I don’t understand. I thought--we all
thought--that you--that you cared for her----”

“My dear fellow, what in the world has that got to do with it? The
more I cared for her the less likely I’d be to go within a thousand
miles of her. For God’s sake, and Pattie’s sake, and my sake, try
to get this straight. I am absolutely no good. I don’t mean that
I’m one of your deep-dyed, hair-raising villains--no such luck; I’m
simply a waster and rotter of the very first water who’s gone to
and fro over the face of the earth doing the things that he ought
not to have done, and leaving undone the things that he ought to
have done for more years than he cares to remember. You’re worse
than mad to tempt me to forget it; don’t do it again, there’s a
good chap. And while you’re about it, try and remember that the
best there is isn’t half good enough for Pattie.”

Ledyard swallowed hard.

“I don’t care--you can talk till you’re black in the face, and I
won’t believe that you know yourself. If it came to a show-down,
you’d be as good as the best.”

“Thanks. As it’s not likely to, you can take my word for it that
I’m not of the stuff of which heroes are made, even in a pinch.
Now that that’s settled, how about hunting up the little Vallorosa
hussy? It’s getting on a bit.”

“I hope to the Lord she’s decided to settle here for life.”

“Oh, rot. Tell you what, if the young thing doesn’t turn up
pretty promptly, we’ll call out the royal, holy, gold-fringed,
pearl-tasselled, diamond-studded red parasols, and romp over in
time to cadge some light refreshments from His Majesty. He has
a cognac that will make you sit up and yelp with excitement;
Napoleon--the real stuff, I pledge you my word. I suppose that it
will be simply thrown away on you; half a nip of prune cordial
sets the good old world going round for you Yankee martyrs these
days, what?”

“Help!” invoked Ledyard with gloomy fervour. “Glad to know you get
the comic sections regularly.”

“My priceless old thing, we get nothing whatever regularly; that’s
one of the unholy charms. When my royal master and pupil feels
any craving for mail and newspapers and other foreign frivolities
he summons about twenty of the stalwart flowers of the masculine
population and bids them oil and decorate and adorn themselves as
befits the occasion and pop into the old lacquer sampans and yo
heave ho on business of state. A few days or a few weeks later they
turn up like Santa Claus bearing gifts, and I take all the pretty
envelopes with an English postmark and put them in a nice tin can
with a nice round stone, and drop ’em out of the window plop into
the jolly old river--returned unopened, with many, many thanks!
You never can tell when one of the tricky little devils might read
‘Anthony, come home, all is forgiven.’”

“But, my Lord, they must be worried half frantic! How do they know
whether you’re alive or dead?”

“My dear chap, the only thing that the Bolinghams have ever worried
about as far as little Anthony Christopher’s concerned was that he
mightn’t have the grace to die before one of his waggish pranks
landed him in jail or actually cost them something in pounds and
shillings instead of mere lamentations! That’s why I gratified
them by throwing over my share of the title when I came of age.
Lord Anthony, what? No, thanks. But it’s all too clear that you
don’t know Aunt Pamela and Aunt Clarissa, the last of the Bolingham
vestals, or those splendid fellows, Roderick, Cyril, and Oliver.”

“Good-night, I’d hate to be as bitter as that about my worst
enemy.” Ledyard’s honest drawl was chilled and thoughtful.

“Bitter? About my priceless family?” His careless mirth flooded the
quiet room. “No, I swear that’s good! Why, my child, I revel in
’em; I have ever since Oliver used to jerk me out of bed at two in
the morning to wallop the everlasting soul out of me because he’d
lost at _écarté_--ragging along all the time about how it was his
sacred duty as head of the Bolingham family to see that I learned
not to disgrace it again by getting in through the scullery window
at nine o’clock of a fine August night. I wasn’t more than three
feet high, with a face no bigger than a button, but I couldn’t keep
it straight then and I can’t keep it straight now when I think
of that enormous red mug of his with all those noble sentiments
pouring out of it--and the harder he walloped and the nobler he
gabbled, the more I knew he’d lost. I was Satan’s own limb even in
those days, and he generally managed to dig up some excellent and
fruity reason for improving the witching hours with a boot-strap,
but it undeniably was one on both of us that the night that he lost
one hundred and thirty-seven golden guineas I’d been in bed in a
state of grace since early dawn, with a nice bit of fever and a
whopping toothache.”

“And just what did he do about that?” inquired Ledyard grimly. He
did not seem to be as carried away by the humour of the situation
as the Honourable Tony, whose carved dimples had become riotous at
memory.

“Oh, you simply have to credit Noll for resource--he trounced
the skin off me for adding hypocrisy to my list of iniquities!
And there was I, innocent as a water baby of guilt or guile for
twenty-four priceless hours--you’ll have to admit that it was a
good one on me. I’ve taken jolly good care from that day to this
that I didn’t let a night come around without deserving a simply
first-rate caning, let me tell you!”

Ledyard made a gesture of fierce disgust.

“Do you mean to tell me that your own brother beat you night after
night and no one lifted a hand to stop him?”

“Oh, well, come, who do you think was going to stop him?” inquired
the Honourable Tony with indulgent amusement. “After all, the noble
Duke had a fairly good right to see that a cheeky brat learned all
of the sacred traditions of the family from the sacred head of the
family, hadn’t he? Well, rather! All the more to his credit that
the little jackanapes wasn’t his own brother.”

“Wasn’t?” echoed Ledyard blankly.

“Oh, come, come--you don’t mean to say that no one’s told you the
true history of the little black sheep rampant on the Bolingham
arms? No? Oh, I say, I _am_ let down---- I thought all you chaps
used to jaw about it for hours between flights! No one even said
a word about it down the river? Well, there’s glory for you;
it begins to look as though I’d won your kind attentions under
entirely false pretences, my dear kid. All the time that you’ve
been thinking me a purely blue specimen of the British aristocracy
I’ve been a black skeleton and a dancing sheep and a mere paltry
half brother to His Grace the Duke of Bolingham--and it begins to
look as though I were an impostor to boot. I say, I _am_ sick.”

He looked far from sick; leaning back in the long chair with his
brown hands clasped behind his bright head, he looked radiantly and
outrageously amused.

Ledyard gave a vicious kick to an innocuous rattan stool.

“I don’t know what you’re driving at, but if you’re implying that
the reason that I was misguided enough to choose you for a friend,
was that you happened to have a duke for your father, you can shut
your mouth and eat your words. I’d always understood that you were
Bolingham’s son, but I don’t give a curse if he picked you out of
an ash-can, and you know it. Dukes mean nothing in my young life,
let me tell you. If you aren’t Bolingham’s son, who are you?”

“Oh, I’m Bolingham’s son, all right enough, only unlike Noll and
Cyril and Roddie, I don’t happen to be able to claim the Lady
Alicia Honoria Fortescue as my mother. No, no, nothing to bring
the blush of shame to that ingenuous brow, William. The lady died
some eighteen years before I arrived on the scene, so neither of us
can be blamed, you’ll admit. My mother’s name happened to be Biddy
O’Rourke, and I’d be willing to take an oath that she was prouder
of that and being able to dance longer on her toes than any one
else in the London music halls, than of the minor matter of bearing
the title of Duchess of Bolingham and having forty-two servants
call her ‘Your Grace.’ Your Grace! I shouldn’t be surprised if it
fitted her better than the Lady Alicia Honoria.”

“You mean he was married to her?”

“Rather--rather, my young sleuth! There was all too little doubt
on that score to make it pleasant for any one but the unregenerate
Duke and his Duchess. It seemed to afford them considerable
amusement.”

“I didn’t know that dukes married--married artists.” Young Ledyard
eyed his host with suspicion; he had fallen victim more than once
to the soaring flights of that gentleman’s imagination.

“They don’t; that was exactly what furnished all the ripe
excitement. He not only married her, but he was most frightfully
set up about it--fairly swollen with pride. Nothing damped them, as
far as I can learn; Society and the Court and the whole blooming
family went off their heads with excitement and cut her and
insulted her and disowned her--and she laughed in their faces and
danced on their toes. She thought that the whole thing was the most
stupendous joke; Bunny says that there never were five minutes
after she came to Gray Courts that you couldn’t hear her laughing
or singing somewhere about the place--and sometimes doing both at
once.”

“Who’s Bunny?”

“Bunny was her maid--afterward she was my own private slave until
the magnificent Noll showed her the gates of the ancestral home
after she’d locked me up in her room one night when he was out
hunting for me with the boot-strap! She went off into the most
stunning hysterics right outside the door and called him a bloody
roaring monster what ought to have his heart cut out for laying a
finger on an innocent lamb. And when they fished the innocent lamb
out from under the bed and informed him between larrups that his
Bunny had been hurled into outer darkness by two footmen and an
under-gardener, he let out the last howls of his life. He’d reached
the mature age of six and a half, but he hasn’t lost or found
anything since worth a single solitary howl!”

“Why didn’t your mother and father stop them?” demanded Ledyard,
looking stern and sick and still faintly incredulous.

“Because the only active interference they were capable of at the
time would have been with a Ouija board,” explained the Honourable
Tony affably. “Exit Biddy, Duchess of Bolingham, laughing, on the
day that young Anthony Christopher Stoningham Calvert makes his
first bow to a ravished family. I’ll wager that before she slipped
off she realized that it was a good one on all of us, too!”

“Well, but what happened to your father?”

“Oh, the Black Duke, as he was impolitely referred to, hadn’t
extracted any amusement from life before he discovered his Biddy,
and once she was gone, he evidently considered it a dingy affair.
He slunk around the empty corridors for a bit hunting for the echo
of her laughter, but he got tired of that game, too, and died of
pneumonia and boredom without making any particular fuss--though
Bunny swears that after everyone in the room thought he was gone
for good and they all were filing out of the room on the tips of
reverent toes, he flung back his head and gave one great roar of
laughter--the kind of a roar that he used to give when he’d come
on little Biddy in a dark hall, dancing out an imitation of the
Bolingham vestals at their weekly task of patronizing the parish
poor. Bunny said that it fair scared the breath out of their
bodies, but when they went back he was lying there as dead as last
year’s wild boar.”

“Calvert, are you making this up?”

The Honourable Tony turned his head sharply toward his
interlocutor, his dark eyes narrowed to slits. After a moment’s
cold scrutiny of the troubled countenance, he shrugged his
shoulders with a not highly diverted laugh.

“My dear kid, I suppose that I’ve asked for this by over-valuing
your powers of discrimination! Just as a tip, though, I may pass on
to you the information that even the clown in the circus is apt to
draw the line at playing the giddy fool over his mother. I might
add, moreover, that my fertile imagination would balk at inventing
any one as delightful as the lady who did me the honour to be mine.”

Ledyard, flushed to the bone, met the ironic gaze with considerable
dignity.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “As you imply, I’m a tasteless fool.”

“And so you’re in excellent company!” his host assured him. “I will
now rapidly descend from the ancestral high-horse and prove to you,
strictly as a matter of penance, that I am not invariably a liar.
If you’ll wait just half a shake, I’ll present you to Biddy, ninth
Duchess of Bolingham.”

He vanished into the room at the back with a reassuring gleam over
his shoulder at young Ledyard’s startled countenance, and was back
in rather less than half a shake with a shabby black case in his
hands. He put it carefully on the table between them, touched a
spring, and stepped with a low bow.

“There!” he announced. “Madame Biddy, the American kid with the
freckles--you know the one. Mr. Bill Ledyard from Ohio, the Duchess
of Bolingham--from Ireland.”

Out of the black velvet frame there smiled, wicked and joyful, a
tiny vision of gold and ivory and sapphire. The head, with its
froth of bright curls, lightly tilted--the nose tilted, too--and
the lips tilted, too--there she sat laughing down the years, gay as
a flower, reckless as a butterfly, lovely as a dream.

“Buffets and insults and three inimitable step-children and four
incomparable sisters-in-law--and then some artist chap came along
and painted her like this!” The Honourable Tony leaned over,
touching the gauzy folds of the dress with a light and caressing
finger. “She’s a bit incredible, after all, you know! They were
going to crush all that life and laughter clear down into the
earth, and away she went dancing through their fingers into the
dust that was just a flower garden to her. She’s more alive this
minute than they’ll ever be in all their everlasting stale lives.
Ah, Biddy darlin’, look at you now after flirtin’ with the fine
young man from America, and you with the blessed saints to teach
you wisdom all these weary long years.”

Ledyard stared down at her, young and awed and tongue-tied.

“She’s--she’s the prettiest thing that I ever saw--honestly.”

“Oh, prettier than that, young Bill. She’s the prettiest thing that
ever lived--or ever died. And she was such a lovely little lunatic
herself that we get on famously. We know what a joke it all is,
don’t we, Biddy? God be praised, we even know when it’s on us.
There now, back you go, mavourneen, while Mr. Billee Ledyar’ and I
start out hunting for another lady. Bill, take a look across the
_kampong_ at the sun while I hunt up my helmet--if it’s lower than
Bhakdi’s roof you’d better be off. It goes down like a rocket in
these parts, once it gets started.”

Young Ledyard flung open the great wooden door that had barred out
the heat, and a little breeze came dancing in, barely stirring the
strange glossy leaves that clustered about the ladder-like steps.
The sky was blue as steel; behind the black shadow of the Sultan’s
residence there were livid streaks--the world was silent and alien
as a dream. He shivered strongly, and stepped back into the room.

“The sun’s set,” he said. “There’s someone coming across from that
shack you call a palace.”

The Honourable Tony strolled leisurely out of his bedroom.

“Ghundi!” he commented after a brief inspection. “The incomparable
Ghundi.”

“Who the devil’s Ghundi?”

“He’s my head boy, William, and the delight of my soul; the only
honest man I ever knew, saving your presence. I’ve taught him
English, and he’s taught me considerably more than that--oh,
considerably. What tidings, Ghundi?”

The bronze statue saluted with a grave and beautiful precision.

“Master, the Great One says that the white woman stays. Let your
friend return down the waters without her.”

The Honourable Tony lifted his brows.

“Stays with the Great One, Ghundi?”

“With the Great One, Master.”

The Honourable Tony glanced pensively at the dark bulk of the
palace.

“So much for that!” he murmured gently. “Bear my compliments to the
Great One, Ghundi. Is all in readiness at the beach?”

“The raft waits, Master. Go swiftly, or your friend will stumble in
the night.”

“Excellent advice! Latch the door after you, and on your way,
William; I’ll come as far as the beach. No, this way. The air feels
cool as water, doesn’t it? Smell that breeze; it’s straight down
from the jungle.”

“It smells of poison,” cried young Ledyard fiercely. “The whole
place is rank with it--it’s crawling. Calvert--Calvert, come back
with me. I swear I’ll never let you regret it; I swear----”

“And here we are. Gad, we’re just in time if you want to tell the
raft from the river. In you go, my lad, and off you go. Lord love
you for coming!”

“Calvert, I won’t--I’m not going.”

The Honourable Tony laid his hands lightly and strongly on the
boy’s shoulders, pushing him relentlessly toward the water.

“My dearest kid, don’t be an ass. If you stayed one minute longer,
you’d ruin the best memory of my life. I mean it. Off with you.”...

He stood with one arm flung up in a reassuring gesture of farewell
until the bamboo raft with its sandy-haired occupant vanished
around the dim curve of the river. The night was falling with
the velvet precipitation of the tropics--even while he stood its
dark mantle was about him; new perfumes stole from its folds,
troubling and exquisite, and one by one its jewels shone out--the
small, ruddy fires of the _kampong_, an occasional lantern
swinging hurriedly by and, square by square, the distant windows
in the Sultan’s residence, flashing aggressive as a challenge. He
lowered his arm somewhat abruptly. Very gay to-night, the Sultan’s
residence; gayer than was its wont--gay as for some high festivity.
The imperial Bhakdi was not greatly given to such prodigal display
of oil and tallow; his mentor eyed the illumination critically, and
then, with the old indifferent shrug, swung leisurely off through
the blackness toward the shadow deeper than the surrounding shadows
that was home. He ran lightly up the crazy steps, felt for the
latch--and drew back his hand as sharply as though he had touched
hot coal. He had touched something more startling than any coal;
the groping fingers had closed on emptiness. The latched door was
open.

“Ghundi!” His voice cut sharply into the dark space that a few
minutes before had been a room, green-cushioned, white-matted,
commonplace, and serene. “Ghundi!”

Silence--haunted and ominous. The Honourable Tony leaned against
the door frame and addressed the shadows.

“Of course, this is frightfully jolly! I’d have laid out a mat with
welcome drawn up all over it if I’d had the faintest notion of what
was in store for me--though that would have been a bit superfluous,
come to think of it! You seem to have managed nicely without any
mat at all. I hope you’ve made yourself quite at home?”

Silence. The Honourable Tony did not move, but he raised his voice.

“Mrs. Potts! I say, I hope you’ve made yourself quite at home?”

From the hushed depths came a small, frantic commotion.

“Ah, be qui-_yet_!” The desperate whisper came toward him in a
rush. “Be qui-_yet_, I do implore!”

“Oh, my dear girl, come now! Silence may be golden, and all
that--and naturally I’m enormously flattered at finding you lurking
around the corners of my humble abode, but before we do away with
the human voice entirely, why not have a go at straightening out
one or two minor matters? The first being just precisely what in
the devil you’re doing here instead of on Ledyard’s boat?”

“Meestaire Honable Tonee, on my knees I pray to you, be more
quiyet! Lissen, lissen, come more close. I tell you evairy thing.
No, come more close. Do not let them see--do not, do not let them
hear. Ah--ah--more sof’, more still! So!”

Out of the blackness the suppliant whisper drew him like a taut
thread--nearer, nearer--he stumbled over something small and
yielding, swore and laughed in the same quick breath, and felt two
fluttering hands clutch at him, closing over his wrist in frantic
protest.

“No, no, do not laff--hush, do not laff, I say.”

“Well, but what in _hell_?” inquired the Honourable Tony, softly
enough to satisfy even his exigent audience. “No, I say, drop it,
there’s a good little lunatic! I’m after the matches; they’re on
this table somewhere----”

“Honable Tonee--lissen--eef one of those matches you should light,
we die.”

“Oh, we do, do we? Well, death will be a blessed relief for one of
us and a just retribution for the other. Why hasn’t someone killed
you for using that simply frightful stuff long before this, Daisy?”

“What stuff ees that? Ah, ah, Honable Tonee, I am a-frighten to
die; I am a-frighten!”

“But after all, that hardly alters the merits of the case, now does
it? Though even death doesn’t seem to quite expiate the crime! Do
you bathe in it?”

“But in _what_? Lissen--I tell you, lissen----”

“Lissen yourself, my child; it’s I who am going to tell you.
Apparently you’ve had no guidance whatever so far, but precisely
here is where you acquire a guardian angel. Daisy, little girls
have been boiled in oil for less than using one drop of the noxious
fluid in which you are drowning.”

“No, I do not onnerstan’--no, but lissen, I beg, I pray--you mus’
hide me, Honable Tonee, you mus’ hide me fas’ before he come to
keel us both.”

“Hide you?” The Honourable Tony yielded to unregenerate mirth
above the terrified murmurs of protest. “My dear Potts, you
might precisely as well ask a thimble to hide a perfume factory!
Actually, you know, when I was clean over there by the door, it
fairly bowled me off my feet.”

“Hush--oh, hush--eet ees my pairfume?”

“It is indeed--it most emphatically is.”

“You could know eet from that door?”

“I could know it from the far edge of the _kampong_.”

“Then they fin’ me--then, oh, they fin’ me!”

At the sick terror of that small wail the Honourable Tony stirred.

“I say, you’re not really frightened, are you?”

“I am vairy frighten’ to die,” his visitor told him simply. “You
are not?”

“Well, I’d be jolly well let down, I can tell you! It would upset
my schedule no end; so if it’s all right with you we might go on
living for a bit.”

“But that I think we cannot do,” said the small, chilled whisper.

“The deuce you say!” commented the Honourable Tony pensively. He
swung himself up onto the table, and sat staring into the darkness
for a minute, his head cocked on one side, swinging his long legs
over its edge. “Look here, suppose we stop entertaining each other
and bag a few of the blood-curdling facts. What do you say to
diving in again at the beginning of all the small talk, and telling
me just exactly what you’re doing trotting into my humble dwelling
and turning it into a cross between a madhouse and a cemetery?
The woman’s touch, so long lacking, what? Do stop crying; nothing
in the whole world’s worth crying about like that--not even that
infernal perfume!”

“I cry becaus’ vairy greatly I am afraid,” she explained gently.
“An’ vairy greatly I am sorry that I bring to your poor abode such
pain an’ grief an’ danger. I make you all excuse; I did not know
wair else to go--no, truly, truly I did not know----”

“But why in the name of grief didn’t you go to the boat?”

“Honable Tonee, eet was gone, eet was gone!”

“Oh, rot! The boat was here until a few minutes ago. Look here, my
dear child, if you’re trying any of your little tricks on me, I
can save you any amount of time and trouble by tipping you off to
the fact that you’re heading straight for a wash-out. This whole
performance looks most frightfully dodgy and I’m beginning to be
pretty fairly fed up. From brother Manuelo on----”

The limp bundle shivering quietly beneath his fingers shivered more
deeply still, and sighed.

“About Manuelo, that was a lie.”

“Well, it’s gratifying to have my worst suspicions confirmed,
naturally! But of all the confounded cheek----”

“Eet was jus’ a lie that Manuelo he was my brothair. Manuelo, he
ees the belove’ of my heart.”

“The devil he is!” The Honourable Tony’s voice was edged with mild
interest. “And may I ask why the brotherly transformation?”

“What ees that?”

“Why the lie, Daisy?”

“Because men, too well do I know them. Ah, ah, too well! Eef I say
to Meestair Ledyar’, to that black devil out from hell, to your own
self, Honable Tonee, that eet ees tryin’ to save the belove’ of my
heart that I go crezzy in my haid and die two thousan’ death from
terror, you think they lissen to me then? You think they help me
then? Well, me, I think not.”

“And me, I think not, too!” agreed the Honourable Tony promptly.
“Quite a student of human nature, in your quiet way, aren’t you,
Daisy? I say, do let’s have some light on this! I don’t think that
Manuelo would fancy it for a moment if he knew that we were all
huddled up here in the pitch-black whispering things at each other.”

“Manuelo, one thousan’ time he have tell me eef he fin’ me with a
man alone, he cut the heart out from our body.”

“Perhaps it’s all for the best that he’s going to remain in the
tin mines,” suggested the Honourable Tony philosophically. “No
cloud without a silver lining, what? However, I’m going to humour
Manuelo to the extent of seeing that we have all the light that a
large lamp can cast over what I trust is going to prove a brief
interview. Do stop whimpering, there’s a good child!”

“Honable Tonee, thees lamp you mus’ not light. See, no longer I
cry--no longer I make one soun’--only thees lamp you mus’ not
light. No, wait, you do not onnerstan’----”

“You’re putting it conservatively, Daisy!”

“Wait, then, I tell you--all I make clear--but no light. Eef there
is a light, he know you are here; eef he know you are here, he know
that I, too, am here--an’ eef he know I, too, am here, then we die.
That ees clear now?”

“Well, frankly, it still leaves a bit to be desired. One or two
minor gaps--who is it that’s going to slay us when he comes to the
conclusion that we’re both here, Daisy? Manuelo?”

“No, no, no--Manuelo, I tell you, he dyin’ in those tin mines.”

“Oh--well, then, candidly, you have me. If it isn’t Manuelo, my
mind is a perfect blank as to who would profit by doing away with
us. Unless--you haven’t misled me about Mr. Potts, have you?”

“Ah, what now?”

“Mr. Potts is still dead?”

“Honable Tonee, eet ees not well to mock--eet ees not well to laff!
He was dead like I say; eet ees not good to mock the dead.”

“He has my abject apologies. But that brings us back to the
murderer.”

“Murderair?”

“By all means--the cove who’s going to dash in and dispose of us if
I light the lamp.”

“Honable Tonee, you know well eet ees he, that mos’ accurse’ black
devil of all black devils to whom I pray to save my Manuelo.”

“Daisy, it can’t be our royal Bhakdi that you’re referring to in
these unmeasured terms?”

And suddenly she clung to him, weeping abjectly through her
clicking teeth.

“No, no, nevair say hees name--nevair spik it! Wair ees there I can
be hid--wair ees there I can be hid far away? I am a-frighten to
die--Manuelo--ah-h--Manuelo!”

The Honourable Tony felt for the small, untidy silken head in the
darkness, patting it with deft but reluctant fingers.

“My dear kid, if it’s Bhakdi who’s been frightening you into this
state, it’s a good deal simpler than one, two, three to straighten
it out. Tell you what: you curl up in this wicker chair--there,
put your head back, and take a long breath--and I’ll stroll over
to the royal residence and put the fear of God and England into
the little blighter. Don’t howl; it’s going to be absolutely all
serene, I swear----”

But at that the soft convulsion of weeping deepened to mysterious
vehemence.

“No, no, nevair stir--nevair--nevair! He mus’ not know I come here;
he mus’ not know I have see you--eef he know that, you die----”

“Daisy, you’ve been running in too much to the cinemas. What you
need is a good stiff dose of ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ ‘Off with his
head’, what? My good child, the little bounder eats out of my
hand--either or both. He----”

“No, no, no, he keel you,” the frantic, obstinate little voice
stammered in desperate urgency. “That he tell to me--that he say to
me--he keel you.”

“But in the name of the Lord, why?”

“Becaus’ I tell to heem that if once more he lay on me hees black
an’ dirty han’s I go to you for help. Ah, Maria, hees han’s--ah,
Manuelo, Manuelo!”

“Daisy--Daisy, this is all simply too good to be true; no,
honestly, I’m wrenching my mind out of its socket trying to believe
you. You’ll swear he said that he’d kill me? But why? Why?”

“Becaus’ ovair me he ees gone crezzy.” The tear-sodden whisper was
charged with mournful pride. “Ovair me he ees gone crezzy mad. He
tell to me that he marry with me--that the jewels from hees las’
two wive he give to me for prezzens----”

The Honourable Tony yielded to another gale of delighted mirth.

“Well, upon my word, you couldn’t ask for anything fairer than
that! Why not accept?”

“Hush--hush--more still! You have forgot Manuelo?”

“To be entirely candid, my child, I had forgot Manuelo. It’s
delightful to know that you haven’t, however! Well, but then how in
the world did you get here?”

“I have jump out from a window.”

“From a---- Daisy, you’re making this up!”

“No, no--for why, for why should I make thees up, Honable Tonee?
Lissen, he have lock me up in a great ogly room, until I come back
into my sense, he say, becaus’ so bad I cry an’ scream, an’ cry an’
scream--lissen, so then I jump from out that window. Ah, ah, Dios,
eet was too high, that window; my haid eet ache, my haid eet ache
so bad, while I have crawl an’ crawl through all the black--but
that boat he was gone away, Honable Tonee, an’ me, I am a-frighten
till I die, becaus’ I do not know wair to go. Lissen, I am a mos’
bad girl--I bring to you danger an’ worry, but my haid eet hurt,
and I do not know wair----”

“My dear Daisy, you knew exactly.” The Honourable Tony administered
a final reassuring pat, and swung off from the table. “You showed
really extraordinary judgment, not to go into the matter of
taste. This is Liberty Hall, my priceless child; you should feel
entirely at home with practically no effort. Before you settle
down definitely, however, we might run over our lines in case the
Imperial Bhakdi takes it into his head to drop in on us before
we’ve worked out any very elaborate campaign for Liberty and
Manuelo, the heart’s belove’. D’you think he’s liable to dash over
before I could hunt up Ghundi and a sampan, and head you down
stream?”

“No, no--no, no, no--do not leave me! No, I die when you shall
leave me!”

“Oh, come!” remonstrated the Honourable Tony blithely. “That’s
spreading it on fairly thick, you know--I don’t believe that
Manuelo would pass over that kind of thing for a minute. Look here,
I’ll be back before you can get through Jack Robinson----”

“No! No!”

It was indecent for any living creature to show such abject terror,
more like a tortured and frenzied kitten than a sane human being.
The Honourable Tony shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, it’s quite all right with me, you know! I simply thought if
the little beggar was roving about it might be tidier and simpler
to get you out of the way--though it would be any amount jollier
if you were around, naturally. We could do something nice with a
screen--or there’s the other room; on the whole, that has more
possibilities. By Gad, we can get some simply stunning effects,
with practically no trouble at all. I’ve an automatic in there.”

“Ah-h-h!”

“My dear kid, don’t go off like that again, or I won’t let you put
a finger on it. In the extremely remote event that I am dragged
kicking and screaming from the scene of action, however, you could
do some very amusing tricks with it, including potting our imperial
friend. Are you a good shot, Daisy?”

“No, no--what you say now? Do not let heem come; do not let
heem--no thing could I shoot--no thing----”

“Well, there’s one thing that any duffer in the world can shoot,”
said the Honourable Tony soothingly. “There’s absolutely no use
shaking like that; not as long as any stupid little girl in the
world can shoot herself! It’s a simply ripping pistol, Daisy.” He
put one arm about her, light and close, and she relaxed against it
with a strange, comforted little moan. “So that’s that; of course
there’s not half a chance in a thousand that the little beggar
won’t grovel all over the place; I’ll tell him that if he lays one
finger on a British subject, I’ll take jolly good care that England
turns it into an international matter----”

“Oh, for that, he does not care!”

“How do you mean, doesn’t care?”

“No, for Englan’ he does not care--no, not that! When I say to heem
that great Englan’ will protec’ me, he laff right out an’ say,
‘Englan’, bah!’”

“Oh, he said that, did he?” inquired the Honourable Tony grimly.
“Well, that’s not a pretty thing for any fat little Sultan to say.”
He grinned suddenly into the darkness. “‘Englan’, bah!’ Come to
think of it, I’ve murmured something fairly like it myself once
or twice. But then I’m not a fat little Sultan; I happen to be
an Englishman! Daisy, will you swear not to howl if I tell you
something?”

“What now?”

“Well, now it begins to look as though things were going to happen.
There’s a fair-sized cluster of lights bearing down this way from
the royal imperial palace at a good fast clip, and I’m rather
inclined to think that it’s time for little girls that have heart’s
beloveds in the mines to be trotting off to a more secluded spot.
How about it?”

“Yes, yes, I go.” There was a strange and touching docility in the
small voice. “Wair now do I go, Honable Tonee?”

“Here--this way--where’s your hand? Quiet, now; sure you aren’t
going to howl?”

“No; no.”

“That’s right; here’s the door--nothing in the world to howl about,
naturally. Wait, and I’ll find you a chair; or you can curl up on
the bed if you’d rather. That comfortable?”

“Oh, that--that is mos’ comfortable.”

“Good. Now for God’s sake, emulate the well-known mouse! The
revolver’s on the table. No--no--don’t touch it now. Oh, Lucifer,
that perfume! It’ll be our ruin--a headless jackass could smell it
in Singapore. Here, let’s have your handkerchief--quick! Steady on
there. We’re about to receive callers, Daisy!”

There was the sound of feet on the rickety steps--the sound of
hands at the outer door. The Honourable Tony bent down swiftly;
kicked off one shoe--the other--ripped off the white linen coat
and the blue silk scarf, and strode leisurely across the threshold
of his bedroom door with his head on one side and his hands in his
pockets.

“What in the devil?” he inquired amiably of the bronze statue
standing in the pool of light at the head of the stairs. The statue
stirred, and behind it other lights gleamed and danced in darkness.
“Oh--it’s you, Ghundi! What’s the row?

“Master, the Great One bids that you bring the woman and come
swiftly to the palace.”

“Bring what woman?” inquired the Honourable Tony, lazily diverted.
“I say, Ghundi, the Great One hasn’t been having a go at that
brandy again, has he?”

The statue did not move but in the pool of light its eyes shone,
eloquent and imploring.

“Master, jests will not serve you now. She was seen to enter here
by the little son of the head-beater. The Great One says to make
all haste.”

“Well, inform the Great One from me with cordial salutations that
haste is totally foreign to my nature,” remarked the Honourable
Tony affably. “If the largest tiger in the jungle was sitting a
paw’s length off, I couldn’t possibly move rapidly--it’s a most
frightful handicap, I can tell you! As for the little son of the
head-beater, let him be well beaten and allowed no fish for three
days, or he will grow up to be as great a liar as his father.
Shocking what these infants go in for! Did he mention the lady’s
name?”

“Master, master, it is well known that it is the white woman who
came up the waters with your friend. You do ill to delay.”

“Ghundi, it’s never Mrs. Potts? Not the ravishing Mrs. Potts? You
know, that’s pretty priceless in itself. Now suppose you collect
all your little playmates out there and totter back to the Great
One and inform him as gracefully as possible that the ineffable
Potts has gone down the waters that she came up, reluctantly
escorted by Mr. Billee Ledyar’. Present my condolences. She just
caught the boat by the skin of her little white teeth. I agree with
the Great One that it’s a thousand pities that she caught it at
all.”

“Master, I am your servant. I have served you well--I have loved
you better. My heart is yours to use for your meat, my skin for
your carpet; for them I care nothing. If I return without you, they
slay me--if I remain with you, they slay me--it is all one. But
you--you are my master--you are my son--you are my father. Delay no
longer; the woman was seen to enter here--she has not come out.”

The Honourable Tony did not stir from his careless station before
the bedroom door, but something leapt across the guarded space to
that dark and lonely figure--something more warm, more friendly,
more reassuring than any touch of hands.

“Ghundi, there are two fellows this side of Heaven that I’d give a
good bit to take there with me when I go. That sandy-haired young
lunatic who came up the waters is one of them--and you’re the
other. Now cut along back to the Great One, like a good fellow, and
tell him that I was as good as tucked in for the night when you
found me, with a nice little flicker of fever. If I wasn’t cagy
about this dashed night air I’d nip over with you and explain;
as it stands, I’ll trot over the first thing in the morning.
Good-night, old chap; wish the Great One happy dreams.”

Ghundi’s grave voice was suddenly heavy with despair.

“Master, she is here. The air about us cries it to all who breathe.”

“Absolutely sickening, what?” agreed the Honourable Tony. “Jockey
Club, I understand. I picked up her beastly little handkerchief on
the beach path, coming back from the boat--it’s fairly sopped in
it. Here, catch--I was going to send it back to her, but God knows
when it would reach her. The Great One might fancy it; compliments
of the season--corking souvenir, what?”

Ghundi stared down at the wet white ball in his clenched fist.

“Master--I was told to search----”

“And that’ll be about all of _that_,” remarked the Honourable Tony.
A peculiarly ingratiating smile curved the corners of his lips,
and he took both hands from his pockets and made an expressive
gesture toward the long windows above the water. “A little more
chatter like that and out you go to the crocodiles. Come on now,
cut along like a nice chap--my head’s buzzing no end, and I’m mad
for sleep. I’ll have my tea at seven on the tick. And some of that
jolly sticky preserve----”

The dark, troubled face was lit suddenly by a smile, gleaming white
as a benediction, grave and tender and indulgent.

“Where you go,” said Ghundi, “there may I be to serve you!
Farewell, little master.”

He turned back to the dancing lights below him with a sharp word of
command, and as quietly as he had come was gone, passing silently
down the rickety steps into the night. There was a swift murmur of
protest from the waiters, quelled; the light shuffle of feet; the
rustle of parted leaves--silence. The Honourable Tony stood for a
moment listening for any echo of the small dying sounds--whistled
the opening bars of “Where Do We Go From Here, Boys?” twice over
with fine accuracy and restraint, shoved open the bedroom door, and
yielded himself unreservedly to joyous retrospection.

“My word, fairly neat, eh, Daisy? What price the bit about the
handkerchief? And the buzzing head, what? I swear I had no idea
I’d be so good. Fancy what a loss to the stage--or Scotland
Yard--no, no, more sport keeping out of Scotland Yard; well, then,
so that’s that. Now what?”

There was a small sound that might have been a shiver, and a
whisper, strange and lonely as a dream, answered him.

“Now then, farewell, Honable Tonee.”

“Farewell? Thinking of leaving me, Daisy?”

“Yes. Now I am thinkin’--of leavin’ you.”

“My poor kid, you’ll shiver your pretty teeth out if you keep up
like this; I swear I ought to be drawn and quartered for a thumping
brute. After all, it isn’t as much of a lark for you as it is for
me, is it? Now just what _are_ we going to do about you?”

“Honable Tonee, eet ees not for me I shiver; eet ees for you.
Becaus’ you do not onnerstan’--becaus’ you laff--becaus’ you do not
know that all, all ees end. That is mos’ terrible--that you who are
good an’ great an’ love’ by all those Saints do not know that eet
ees end. Of all those Saints and you I ask pardon--I ask pardon,
pardon that thees I have done to you----”

“My dear little lunatic, you’ve done nothing in the world to me;
the blighter knows that if he laid a finger on me he’d be as good
as cutting his throat. While I’m not much given to swanking about
it, half of the big sticks in England are my cousins and my uncles
and my aunts, and though it’s rather a grief to us all, they’d
simply chew him up if he administered as much as a scratch to
anything as sacred as a Bolingham hide. No, I’m a good deal righter
than rain and you take a weight off my mind about the sentiments of
all those Saints; the question before the house is, what about you?”

“Me? Oh, me, eet ees no mattair. Me, I am through.”

“Daisy, I’m just a bit afraid you’re right. We might as well face
the fact at the start that I’m no match for the entire Imperial
army, even if an important item of their defence does consist of
green panties. You wouldn’t consider chucking it?”

“How, chuckin’?”

“You don’t think that Manuelo would understand if you took the two
last wives’ jewels and----”

“Ah,” moaned the little voice in the darkness, “that ees a wicked,
that ees a black an’ ogly thing to say. Me, I am no good--me, I am
no good at all--but that you should have nevair say to me----”

“My dear,” said the Honourable Tony gently, “you’re as good as
gold, and I’m a black-hearted scoundrel that Manuelo ought to flog
from here to his tin mines. In this world or the next, he has my
congratulations; tell him from me that he’s a lucky devil, won’t
you? Now then, I’m off for the other room. I’ll light the lamp,
and give a cracking good imitation of an earnest reader for the
benefit of any callers. In case it doesn’t meet with the proper
applause--just in case, you know--here’s the revolver. You might
bolt the door after I’m gone; that way you’ll have any amount of
time. Not going to be lonely, are you? You can hear me just as well
as though I still were in the room. Moreover, I’m leaving a lady to
take care of you.”

“A ladee?”

“The Duchess of Bolingham. Feel this little black frame? Well,
she’s in there; hold on tight to her. You two are going to adore
each other.”

“No, but I do not onnerstan’; what, what ees thees?”

“This is my mother, Daisy; her first name is Biddy. I think she’s
going to want you to call her by her first name.”

“But she ees daid, your mothair?”

“Dead? That’s the most idiotic description of Biddy; however, there
may be something in what you say, though you’ll never get her
to admit it. Now, then, quite all right? Sure? Good-bye, little
Daisy.”

“Honable Tonee.”

He had to bend his head to catch that faint and wavering whisper.

“Yes?”

“Honable Tonee, becaus’ thees room eet ees so black an’ still--not,
not that I am a-frighten, but becaus’ thees room eet ees so
black an’ still, would you be so vairy kin’ to kiss me good-bye?
Manuelo--Manuelo, he would onnerstan’. You do not think that ladee
would be angery?”

The Honourable Tony bent his bright head to the dark one, and laid
his gay lips swiftly and surely on the small painted mouth.

“That lady would be terrible in anger if I didn’t. Daisy, what nice
perfume! Nicest I ever smelled in all my life. I’m going to get
bottles and bottles of it. All right now, little thing? Good-night
then--Biddy, you look after her; show her all the prettiest places
up there--mind the two of you keep out of mischief! Slip the bolt
behind me, Daisy.”

With a last touch on her hair, light and caressing as his voice,
he was gone through the darkness. He pulled the door to behind him
noiselessly, and stood leaning against it for a moment with bowed
head, listening. Silence--a faint patter of feet--the heavy grating
of the bolt driven home. He raised his head.

“Good girl!” said the Honourable Tony clearly.

He swung across to the table, felt for the matches, and lit the
lamp deftly and swiftly, pulling the long chair into its friendly
aura and distributing the cushions with a rapid dexterity that
belied the lethargy that he had maintained tigers incapable of
disturbing. But then, a little wind had just passed through the
quiet room--a little wind that blew in heavy with darkness and
fragrance and something else--heavy with a distant murmur of
voices, and far-off footsteps coming nearer through the night. It
passed as it came, but the flame in the lamp flickered and burned
brighter, and the flame that danced in the eyes of the gentleman
reclining in the long chair flickered and burned brighter, too,
though they were discreetly lowered over the account of a highly
unsavory Bazaar murder in a two-month-old paper from Singapore.
Even when the footsteps were on the rickety stairs he continued to
read; even when they were on the threshold he only bent his head
a little lower, intent and absorbed; even when the knocks rang
out, ominous and insistent, he did not lift those dancing eyes. He
flipped over the first page of the Singapore paper with a dexterous
thumb and finger, and lifted his voice in welcome leavened with
surprise.

“Come in!” called the Honourable Tony to those who stood in
darkness. And the door opened and they came in.

First there came a small, plump, swarthy gentleman in immaculate
white linen of an irreproachable cut. He had small neat feet shod
in the shiniest of patent-leather boots, and small fat hands
adorned with three superb emeralds, and a set of highly unpleasant
little cat whiskers curling into a grizzled gray at the ends. About
his throat was a scarlet watered ribbon from which dangled a star
as glittering as a Christmas tree ornament, and about his head was
wound a turban of very fine red silk pierced by a brooch in which
crouched another emerald large as a pigeon egg, flawed and sinister
and magnificent. In one fat little hand he held a pair of white
kid gloves and a small handkerchief badly crumpled; in the other a
swagger stick of ebony banded with smooth gold. He walked on the
tips of his patent-leather toes, and behind him came ten gigantic
figures in incredible green uniforms with gold-laced jackets that
were debtors to the Zouaves, and fantastic caps strapped under
their chins reminiscent of the organ-grinder’s monkey and the
dancing vaudeville bellboy. Lanterns light as bubbles swung from
their great paws and in the gilded holsters at their waists the
mother-of-pearl handles of the famous automatics gleamed like the
Milky Way. They padded behind their master, silent as huge cats,
and smiled at one another like delighted children. His Imperial
Majesty, the Sultan Bhakdi, accompanied by the Royal Body Guard,
was making a call on the British Adviser.

The British Adviser rose easily to his feet.

“Your Majesty!” he saluted, with precisely the correct inflection
of gratified amazement.

“Excellency!” His Majesty’s accent was a trifle more British than
the Honourable Tony’s, but he purred in his throat, which is not
done. “We were alarmed by the good Ghundi’s report of your health.
You suffer?”

“Oh, Ghundi’s overdone it!” protested the Honourable Tony, all
courteous regret, but the carved dimples danced. “I’m no end sorry
that you’ve had all this bother. It’s frightfully decent of you to
give it a thought; nothing in the world the matter but a rather
stiff nip of fever. I was going to turn in in another minute, and
sleep it off. I beg any number of pardons for this costume; it’s
hardly one that I’d have chosen for such an honour.”

“Hardly!” agreed the Sultan cordially. “Hardly! However, as the
visit was unheralded, and as the defects of the costume may be so
easily remedied, we dismiss it gladly. Come, we waive formality;
we have been bored most damnably without you and the excellent
bridge. The mountain comes to Mahomet; my good Mahomet, on with
your boots, on with your coat, and out with your cards. We will
drive off this pestilential fever with three good rubbers and four
good drinks. Ahmet will fetch your coat. It is in your room? Ahmet!”

The Honourable Tony moved more swiftly than Ahmet. He laid one hand
on the handle of the bedroom door, but he did not turn it.

“I’m absolutely sick over making such an ass of myself,” he said
with pleasing candour. “But I do honestly feel too rotten bad to
last out even a hand. I’ll be fit as a fiddle in the morning, and
entirely at Your Majesty’s disposal; but for to-night I’m going to
ask you to excuse me.”

“But to-night we will most certainly not excuse you,” His Imperial
Majesty replied amiably. “No, no, on the contrary. Rather not, as
you say. To-night, Excellency, we are quite through. We have been
culpably lenient and indulgent in the past; we have overlooked
one hundred stupid impertinences and five hundred impertinent
stupidities, but your bridge--your bridge was impeccable and we
have long desired to perfect our game. Now, however, you outreach
our patience. Stand aside, I beg you. When Ahmet fetches your
Excellency’s coat and your Excellency’s boots, he will also fetch
your Excellency’s lady.”

The Honourable Tony gave a shout of astounded delight.

“My hat!” he cried. “But this is simply gorgeous. All this time
that I’ve been ragging you you’ve been plotting a bloody revenge?”

“Revenge,” replied His Imperial Majesty, with an impatient flick of
the white gloves, “is an incident. I wish the woman. Stand aside!”

“It’s a dream,” decided the Honourable Tony, cocking his head with
Epicurean satisfaction. “No, by Heaven, it’s better than a dream.
Just what are you going to do if I don’t stand aside?”

“Shoot you where you stand. Come, come--we are over-patient.”

The Honourable Tony sighed beatifically, as one whose cup of joy
was full to overflowing.

“Oh, come now, if you ask me, you’re dashed impatient. Shooting
me down in this damn casual way--what d’you think the British
Government’s going to make of it?”

“Nothing,” replied the British Government’s loyal ally blandly.
“Nothing whatsoever. In due time the proper authorities will be
informed that you were lost overboard on an expedition after
crocodiles, and owing to the unfortunate proclivities of those
depraved reptiles, your body was not recovered. I do not imagine
that the loss will afflict the Government so deeply as you
imagine.”

The Honourable Tony’s manner changed abruptly from enchanted
amusement to the cold insolence of a badly spoiled young man
dismissing his valet.

“And that’s enough,” he said. “Take your army and be off. You’re
dashed amusing, but you overdo it. If an apology from you were
worth the breath you draw, I’d have one out of you for the country
that I represent and its representative. As it is, I give you fair
warning to clear out; I’m about fed up.”

“Till I count three to stand aside,” remarked His Imperial Majesty
conversationally, abandoning the royal “we” as though it were no
longer necessary in so informal a discussion, “I shall regret the
bridge.”

“You can count to three thousand if you can get that far,” the
Honourable Tony informed him politely. “But while you’re about it
you might remember that we’re in the twentieth century, not the
Adelphi Theatre.”

“We are in Asia,” said His Imperial Majesty. “Life is good,
Excellency, and Death, I am told, is a long and dreary affair. The
woman is not worth it--a gutter rat out of the music halls. It is
her good fortune to amuse me. Stand aside, I beg!”

“My mother was from the music halls,” said the Honourable Tony. “I
have half a mind to mop up the floor with you before I turn in.”

“You are a brave man,” said His Imperial Majesty equably. “And a
fool.” He turned to the black and emerald giants, and they quivered
slightly. “Attention!”

The giants ceased quivering and stood very straight.

“Ready!” said Bhakdi softly. The pearl-handled automatics flashed
like jewels.

“Aim!” said Bhakdi with a flick of the handkerchief toward the slim
figure framed in the doorway.

“You ought to be jolly grateful to me for teaching you all those
nice words,” remarked the figure reproachfully. “They sound simply
corking when you snap ’em out like that.”

“I count,” said Bhakdi. “One.”

“I wish you could see yourselves,” said the Honourable Tony
admiringly. “For all the world like a lot of comic-opera pirates
panting to get into the chorus when the tenor says ‘go.’
‘For-I’m-the-big-bad-black-faced-chief’--you know the kind of
thing.”

“Two,” said Bhakdi.

“I say, you _are_ going it!” cried the British Adviser. In the
gleam from the lanterns his hair was ruffled gold and his eyes
black mischief. “Aren’t you afraid of its being a bit of a let-down
to the Imperial Guard after all this?”

“Three!” said Bhakdi, and he flicked the handkerchief again. “Fire!”

There was a rip and a rattle of sound along the green line--from
the other side of the bolted door there came a faint reply, precise
and sharp as an echo. The Honourable Tony sagged forward to his
knees, still clutching at the handle, his face lit with an immense,
an incredulous amazement.

“By God!” he whispered. “By God, you’ve done it!”

And suddenly in the lean curve of his cheek the dimples danced once
more, riotous and unconquered.

“I say,” he murmured, “I say, Biddy, that’s--that’s a good one!
Comic opera, what? That--that’s a good one--on me----”

His fingers slipped from the door, and he was silent.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise
they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaireded quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious and otherwise left
unpaireded.

Transcriber removed duplicate book title just above the first story.

Page 113: “Fairfax Carter they they should” was printed that way,
but probably should be “that they”.