(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
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
small mad thing.
"He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon,"
carolled Daphne, all her own 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 some one 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 oddly 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 rather 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-by 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 softly. "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 wretched 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 lovely and 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--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 forever England. There 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--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-by--I'll never forget that you came back."
"I am not going," said Daphne sternly. "Not if you beg me. Not if you
are a devil out of hell. 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 some one 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, 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 class 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 swift, 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 into 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 potpurri 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 odors from the bee-garden, and the sleepy happy noises
of small things tucking themselves away for the night, and the faint but
poignant 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; some
one 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 cafe 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 some one 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 some one about it--I had to, I had to.
I had to wait until father and Audrey went away. I knew they'd hate to
see me--she was my stepmother, 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 Oxford 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 swear I have. When the
others used to take their dirty drugs to make them forget, they would
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 squalor and vileness would fade and dissolve--and I would see
the sun-dial, with the yellow 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's singing in the twilight, singing, 'There is a lady, sweet
and kind' and 'Weep you no more, sad fountains' and 'Hark, hark, the
lark.' And the small 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 small 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 have 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
will not have you waste a dream on me. Listen--there is nothing vile
that I have not done--nothing, do you hear? Not clean sin, like
murder--I have 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.
"But 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
small white 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-by--"
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--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? Why,
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: "Some one thought--some one 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'd probably would have been jolly glad of a chance to
drop out quietly and have every one 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.