Left to his own resources, the Duke of Ormskirk sat down beside the table
and fell to making irrelevant marks upon a bit of paper. He hummed the air
of Marian's song. There was a vague contention in his face. Once he put
out his hand toward the open despatch-box, but immediately he sighed and
pushed, it farther from him. Presently he propped his chin upon both hands
and stayed in the attitude for a long while, staring past the balustrade at
the clear, pale sky of April.
Thus Marian's father, the Earl of Brudenel, found Ormskirk. The Earl
was lean and gray, though only three years older than his prospective
son-in-law, and had been Ormskirk's intimate since boyhood. Ormskirk had
for Lord Brudenel's society the liking that a successful person usually
preserves for posturing in the gaze of his outrivalled school-fellows:
Brudenel was an embodied and flattering commentary as to what a less able
man might make of chances far more auspicious than Ormskirk ever enjoyed.
All failure the Earl's life had been; in London they had long ago forgotten
handsome Harry Heleigh and the composure with which he nightly shoved his
dwindling patrimony across the gaming-table; about Halvergate men called
him "the muddled Earl," and said of him that his heart died, with his young
wife some eighteen years back. Now he vegetated in the home of his fathers,
contentedly, a veteran of life, retaining still a mild pride in his past
vagaries; [Footnote: It was then well said of him by Claridge, "It is
Lord Henry Heleigh's vanity to show that he is a man of pleasure as well
as of business; and thus, in settlement, the expedition he displays
toward a fellow-gambler is equitably balanced by his tardiness toward
a too-credulous shoemaker."] and kindly time had armed him with the
benumbing, impenetrable indifference of the confessed failure. He was
abstractedly courteous to servants, and he would not, you felt, have given
even to an emperor his undivided attention. For the rest, the former
wastrel had turned miser, and went noticeably shabby as a rule, but this
morning he was trimly clothed, for he was returning homeward from the
quarter-sessions at Winstead.
"Dreamer!" said the Earl. "I do not wonder that you grow fat."
The Duke smiled up at him. "Confound you, Harry!" said he, "I had just
overreached myself into believing I had made what the world calls a mess
of my career and was supremely happy. There are disturbing influences
abroad to-day." He waved his hand toward the green-and-white gardens. "Old
friend, you permit disreputable trespassers about Halvergate. 'See you not
Goldy-locks there, in her yellow gown and green sleeves? the profane pipes,
the tinkling timbrels?' Spring is at her wiles yonder,--Spring, the liar,
the queen-cheat, Spring that tricks all men into happiness."
"'Fore Gad," the Earl capped his quotation, "if the heathen man could stop
his ears with wax against the singing woman of the sea, then do you the
like with your fingers against the trollop of the forest."
"Faith, time seals them firmlier than wax. You and I may sit snug now with
never a quicker heart-beat for all her lures. Yet I seem to remember,--once
a long while ago when we old fellows were somewhat sprier,--I, too, seem to
remember this Spring-magic."
"Indeed," observed the Earl, seating himself ponderously, "if you refer to
a certain inclination at that period of the year toward the likeliest wench
in the neighborhood, so do I. 'Tis an obvious provision of nature, I take
it, to secure the perpetuation of the species. Spring comes, and she sets
us all a-mating--humanity, partridges, poultry, pigs, every blessed one of
us she sets a-mating. Propagation, Jack--propagation is necessary, d'ye
see; because," the Earl conclusively demanded, "what on earth would become
of us if we didn't propagate?"
"The argument is unanswerable," the Duke conceded. "Yet I miss it,--this
Spring magic that no longer sets the blood of us staid fellows a-fret."
"And I," said Lord Brudenel, "do not. It got me into the deuce of a scrape
more than once."
"Yours is the sensible view, no doubt....Yet I miss it. Ah, it is not only
the wenches and the red lips of old years,--it is not only that at this
season lasses' hearts grow tender. There are some verses--" The Duke
quoted, with a half-guilty air:
"Now I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying
In furtive conference,--high overhead--
Atingle with rumors that Winter is sped
And over his ruins a world goes Maying.
"Somewhere--impressively,--people are saying
Intelligent things (which their grandmothers said),
While I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying
In furtive conference, high overhead."
"Verses!" The Earl snorted. "At your age!"
"Here the hand of April, unwashed from slaying
Earth's fallen tyrant--for Winter is dead,--
Uncloses anemones, staining them red:
And her daffodils guard me in squads,--displaying
Intrepid lances lest wisdom tread
Where I loiter and dream to the branches' swaying--
"Well, Harry, and to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most
miss,--the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an
uncharted world,--a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous,
and the actual world became one of childhood's shrug-provoking bugbears
dimly remembered."
"I do not understand poetry," the Earl apologetically observed. "It appears
to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to
rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all
you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable," said Lord Brudenel, with a
change of tone; "yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought
him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a
house-breaker--?"
Then the Earl gave an exclamation, for in full view of them Lord Humphrey
Degge was kissing Lord Brudenel's daughter.
"Oh, the devil!" said the Earl. "Oh, the insolent young ape!"
"Nay," said the Duke, restraining him; "not particularly insolent, Harry.
If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly
object to his caresses--quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that
you should not permit Spring about the premises."
The Earl wheeled in an extreme of astonishment. "Come, come, sir! she is
your betrothed wife! Do you not intend to kill the fellow?"
"My faith, why?" said his Grace of Ormskirk, with a shrug. "As for
betrothals, do you not see that she is already very happily paired?"
In answer Brudenel raised his hands toward heaven, in just the contention
of despair and rage appropriate to parental affection when an excellent
match is imperilled by a chit's idiocy.
Marian and Lord Humphrey Degge were mounting from the scrap of forest that
juts from Pevis Hill, like a spur from a man's heel, between Agard Court
and Halvergate. Their progress was not conspicuous for celerity. Now they
had attained to the tiny, elm-shadowed plateau beyond the yew-hedge,
and there Marian paused. Two daffodils had fallen from the great
green-and-yellow cluster in her left hand. Humphrey Degge lifted them,
and then raised to his mouth the slender fingers that reached toward the
flowers. The man's pallor, you would have said, was not altogether due to
his recent wound.
She stood looking up at him, smiling a little timidly, her teeth glinting
through parted lips, her eyes star-fire, her cheeks blazoning gules in his
honor; she seemed not to breathe at all. A faint twinge woke in the Duke
of Ormskirk's heart. Most women smiled upon him, but they smiled beneath
furtive eyes, sometimes beneath rapacious eyes, and many smiled with
reddened lips which strove, uneasily, to provoke a rental; how long was it
he wondered, simply, since any woman had smiled as Marian smiled now, for
him?
"I think it is a dream," said Marian.
From the vantage of the yew-hedge, "I would to Heaven I could think so,
too," observed her father.