Adrian was clearly in a state of excitement. His hair was ruffled, his
pink face showed a deeper flush, his lips were parted, his bosom heaved.
He halted near the threshold, he threw up his hands, he rolled his
eyes, he nodded. It was patent that something had happened.
"Oh, my dears! my dears!" he gasped.
His dears attended, curious, expectant. But as he stood silent, and
merely cast intensely significant glances from one to the other, and
thence to the walls and ceiling, Anthony, constituting himself
spokesman for the company, asked, "Well--? What's the row?"
"Oh, my dears!" Adrian repeated, and advanced a few steps further into
the room, his hands still raised.
"What _is_ it?" besought Susanna, breathless.
"Oh, my dearie dears!" he gasped.
He sank upon a chair.
"I must have a cup of tea before I can speak. Perhaps a cup of tea
will pull me together."
Susanna hastily poured and brought him a cup of tea.
"Ministering angel!" was his acknowledgment. He tasted his tea. "But
oh--unkind--you 've forgotten the sugar." He gazed helplessly at the
tea-table.
Anthony brought him the sugar-bowl.
"Are those cruffins?" he asked, eyeing a dish on the cake-stand.
"They 're mumpers," said Miss Sandus, pushing the cake-stand towards
him. "But you 're keeping us on tenter-hooks."
"I 'm _so_ sorry. It's beyond my control. I must eat a mumpet.
Perhaps then I 'll be able to tell you all about it."
He ate his mumpet--with every sign of relish; he sipped his tea; his
audience waited. In the end he breathed a deep, long sigh.
"I 've had an experience--I 've had the experience of my life," he said.
"Yes--?" said they.
"I could n't lose an instant--I had to run--to tell you of it. I felt
it would consume me if I could n't share it."
Their faces proclaimed their eagerness to hear.
"May I have another cup?" he asked Susanna.
This time, however, he rose, and went to the table.
"The world is so strange," he said.
"Come! we 're waiting for the experience of your life," said Anthony.
"You must n't hurry me--you must n't worry me," Adrian remonstrated.
"I 'm in a very over-wrought condition. You must let me approach it in
my own way."
"I believe the flighty creature has forgotten it," said Anthony.
"Flighty creature?" Adrian levelled eyes black with reproach upon him.
Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Just
because I had a witty mother,--just because I 'm not a stolid,
phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,--just because I 'm sensitive and
impressionable,--he calls me flighty. But you know better, _don't_
you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, you
know that I 'm really as steady and as serious as the pyramids of
Egypt. Even my very jokes have a moral purpose--and what I teach in
them, I learned in sorrow. Flighty!" He shot another black glance at
the offender, and held out his cup for a third filling.
"Blessings be on the man who invented tea," he devoutly murmured. "On
Friday especially"--he appealed to Susanna--"_is n't_ it a boon? I
don't know how one could get through Friday without it. You poor dear
fortunate Protestants"--he directed his remark to Miss Sandus--"have no
conception how frequently Friday comes. I think there are seven
Fridays in the week."
Susanna was softly laughing, where (in that wonderful, crisp, fresh,
close-fitting, blue-grey gown, with its frills and laces and
embroideries) she sat in the corner of a long, red-damask-covered sofa,
by the prettily decked tea-table. Anthony, standing near her, looking
down at her, was conscious of a great content in his heart, and of a
great craving. "How splendid she is. Was there ever such hair? Were
there ever such eyes, such lips? Was there ever such a frock? And
then that faint, faint, faintest perfume, like a remembrance of
violets!" I daresay something to this effect was vaguely singing
itself to his thoughts.
"But the experience of your life? The experience of your life?" Miss
Sandus insisted.
"He's clean forgotten it," Anthony assured her.
"Forgotten it? Tush," Adrian flung back, with scorn. "But you 're all
so precipitate. One has to collect one's faculties. There are fifty
possible ways of telling a thing--one must select the most effective.
And then, if you come to that, life has so many experiences, and so
many different sorts of experience. Life, to the man with an open eye,
is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments. I never could and
never shall understand how it is possible for people to be bored. What
do you say "--he looked towards the piano--"to my singing you a little
song?"
"You 're inimitable--but you 're inimitably exasperating." Miss Sandus
gave him up, with a resigned toss of the head.
"Do sing us a little song," Susanna begged.
He set off, dancing, in the direction of the instrument. But midway
there he stopped, and half turned round, poising, as it were, in his
flight.
"Grave or gay? Sacred or profane?" he asked from over his shoulder.
"Anything--what you will," Susanna answered.
"I 'll sing you a little Ave Maria," he decided. Whereupon, instead of
proceeding, he turned his back squarely upon the piano, and squarely
faced his hearers.
"When a musician composes an Ave Maria," he instructed them, "what he
ought to try for is exactly what those nice old Fifteenth Century
painters in Italy tried for when they painted their Annunciations. He
should try to represent what one would have heard, if one had been
there, just as they tried to represent what one would have seen. Now,
how was it? What would one have heard? What did our Blessed Lady
herself hear? Look. It was the springtime, and it was the end of the
day. And she sat in her garden. And God sent His Angel to announce
the 'great thing' to her. But she must not be frightened. She, so
dear to God, the little maid of fifteen, all wonder and shyness and
innocence, she must not be frightened. She sat in her garden, among
her lilies. Birds were singing round her; the breeze was whispering
lightly in the palm-trees; near-by a brook was plashing; from the
village came the rumour of many voices. All the pleasant, familiar
sounds of nature and of life were in the air. She sat there, thinking
her white thoughts, dreaming her holy day-dreams. And, half as if it
were a day-dream, she saw an Angel come and kneel before her. But she
was not frightened--for it was like a day-dream--and the Angel's face
was so beautiful and so tender and so reverent, she could not have been
frightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her,
and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar
music of the world went on--the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind,
the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went
on--there was no pause, no hush, no change--nothing to startle
her--only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a
single sound. All the sounds of earth and heaven, the homely, familiar
sounds of earth, but the choiring of the stars too, all the sounds of
the universe, at that moment, as the Angel knelt before her, drew
together into a single sound. And 'Hail,' it said, 'hail Mary full of
grace!'"
For a minute, after he had finished, Adrian stood still, and no one
spoke. Then he returned to the fireside, and sank back into his chair.
"What a beautiful--what a divinely beautiful--idea," Susanna said at
last, with feeling.
"Beautiful," emphatically chimed in Protestant Miss Sandus.
"Stand still, true poet that you are,--I know you, let me try and name
you," laughed Anthony, from the hearth-rug.
"Chrysostom--he should be named Chrysostom," said Miss Sandus.
"The world is a garden of beautiful ideas," was Adrian's modest
acceptance of these tributes. "One only has to cull them. But
now"--he rose--"I must toddle home. Are you going my way?" he inquired
of Anthony.
"What?" protested Miss Sandus. "You're leaving us, without telling the
experience of your life--the experience that you 'had to run' to tell
us!"
"And without singing us your song," protested Susanna.
Adrian wrung his hands.
"Oh, cruel ladies!" he complained. "How can you be so unjust? I have
told you the experience of my life. And as for singing my song--"
"He can always leave off singing when he hears a master talk," put in
Anthony.
"As for singing my song," said Adrian, ignoring him, "I must go home
and try to write it."