Mr. Satterthwaite caught his breath.
He didn't know what it was exactly. It was not beauty. It was something
else--something much more elusive and intangible than beauty.
She was listening to Mr. Keeley's rather ponderous dinner-table
conversation, her head bent a little sideways. She was there, it seemed
to Mr. Satterthwaite--and yet she was not there! She was, somehow,
a great deal less substantial than anyone else seated round the oval
table. Something in the droop of her body sideways was beautiful--was
more than beautiful. She looked up--her eyes met Mr. Satterthwaite's
for the moment across the table--and the word he wanted leaped to his
mind.
_Enchantment_--that was it. She had the quality of enchantment. She
might have been one of those creatures who are only half human--one of
the Hidden People from the Hollow Hills. She made everyone else look
rather too real.
But at the same time, in a queer way, she stirred his pity. It was as
though semi-humanity handicapped her. He sought for a phrase and found
it. _A bird with a broken wing_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite.
Satisfied, he turned his mind back to the subject of Girl Guides and
hoped that the girl Doris had not noticed his abstraction. When she
turned to the man on the other side of her--a man Mr. Satterthwaite had
hardly noticed--he himself turned to Madge.
"Who is the lady sitting next to your father?" he asked in a low voice.
"Mrs. Graham? Oh! no, you mean Mabelle. Don't you know her? Mabelle
Annesley. She was a Clydesley--one of the ill-fated Clydesleys."
He started. The ill-fated Clydesleys. He remembered. A brother had
shot himself, a sister had been drowned, another had perished in an
earthquake. A queer, doomed family. This girl must be the youngest of
them.
His thoughts were recalled suddenly. Madge's hand touched his under the
table. Everyone else was talking. She gave a faint inclination of her
head to her left.
"That's him," she murmured ungrammatically.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded quickly in comprehension. So this young
Graham was the man of Madge's choice. Well, she could hardly have done
better as far as appearances went--and Mr. Satterthwaite was a shrewd
observer. A pleasant, likeable, rather matter-of-fact young fellow.
They'd make a nice pair--no nonsense about either of them--good,
healthy, sociable young folk.
Laidell was run on old-fashioned lines. The ladies left the dining
room first. Mr. Satterthwaite moved up to Graham and began to talk
to him. His estimate of the young man was confirmed, yet there was
something that struck him as being not quite true to type. Roger Graham
was distrait, his mind seemed far away, his hand shook as he replaced
the glass on the table.
_He's got something on his mind_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite acutely.
_Not nearly as important as he thinks it is, I daresay. All the same, I
wonder what it is._
Mr. Satterthwaite was in the habit of swallowing a couple of digestive
pastilles after meals. Having neglected to bring them down with him, he
went up to his room to fetch them.
On his way down to the drawing room, he passed along the long corridor
on the ground floor. About halfway along it was a room known as the
terrace room. As Mr. Satterthwaite looked through the open doorway in
passing, he stopped short.
Moonlight was streaming into the room. The latticed panes gave it a
queer rhythmic pattern. A figure was sitting on the low windowsill,
drooping a little sideways and softly twanging the strings of a
ukulele--not in a jazz rhythm, but in a far older rhythm, the beat of
fairy horses riding on fairy hills.
Mr. Satterthwaite stood fascinated. She wore a dress of dull dark blue
chiffon, ruched and pleated so that it looked like the feathers of a
bird. She bent over the instrument crooning to it.
He came into the room--slowly, step by step. He was close to her when
she looked up and saw him. She didn't start, he noticed, or seem
surprised.
"I hope I'm not intruding," he began.
"Please--sit down."
He sat near her on a polished oak chair. She hummed softly under her
breath.
"There's a lot of magic about tonight," she said. "Don't you think so?"
Yes, there was a lot of magic about.
"They wanted me to fetch my uke," she explained. "And as I passed here,
I thought it would be so lovely to be alone here--in the dark and the
moon."
"Then I--" Mr. Satterthwaite half rose, but she stopped him.
"Don't go. You--you fit in, somehow. It's queer, but you do."
He sat down again.
"It's been a queer sort of evening," she said. "I was out in the woods
late this afternoon, and I met a man--such a strange sort of man--tall
and dark, like a lost soul. The sun was setting, and the light of it
through the trees made him look like a kind of Harlequin."
"Ah!" Mr. Satterthwaite leaned forward--his interest quickened.
"I wanted to speak to him--he--he looked so like somebody I know. But
I lost him in the trees."
"I think I know him," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Do you? He is--interesting, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is interesting."
There was a pause. Mr. Satterthwaite was perplexed. There was
something, he felt, that he ought to do--and he didn't know what it
was. But surely--surely, it had to do with this girl. He said rather
clumsily, "Sometimes--when one is unhappy--one wants to get away--"
"Yes. That's true." She broke off suddenly. "Oh! I see what you mean.
But you're wrong. It's just the other way round. I wanted to be alone
because I'm happy."
"Happy?"
"Terribly happy."
She spoke quite quietly, but Mr. Satterthwaite had a sudden sense
of shock. What this strange girl meant by being happy wasn't
the same as Madge Keeley would have meant, by the same words.
Happiness, for Mabelle Annesley, meant some kind of intense and vivid
ecstasy--something that was not only human, but more than human. He
shrank back a little.
"I--didn't know," he said clumsily.
"Of course you couldn't. And it's not--the actual thing--I'm not
happy yet--but I'm going to be." She leaned forward. "Do you know
what it's like to stand in a wood--a big wood with dark shadows and
trees very close all round you--a wood you might never get out of--and
then, suddenly--just in front of you, you see the country of your
dreams--shining and beautiful--you've only got to step out from the
trees and the darkness and you've found it?"
"So many things look beautiful," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "before we've
reached them. Some of the ugliest things in the world look the most
beautiful."
There was a step on the floor. Mr. Satterthwaite turned his head. A
fair man with a stupid, rather wooden, face stood there. He was the man
Mr. Satterthwaite had hardly noticed at the dinner table.
"They're waiting for you, Mabelle," he said.
She got up; the expression had gone out of her face; her voice was flat
and calm. "I'm coming, Gerard," she said. "I've been talking to Mr.
Satterthwaite."
She went out of the room, Mr. Satterthwaite following. He turned his
head over his shoulder as he went and caught the expression on her
husband's face, a hungry despairing look. _Enchantment_, thought Mr.
Satterthwaite. _He feels it right enough. Poor fellow--poor fellow._
The drawing room was well lighted. Madge and Doris Coles were
vociferous in reproaches. "Mabelle, you little beast--you've been ages."
She sat on a low stool, tuned the ukulele, and sang. They all joined
in. _Is it possible_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite, _that so many idiotic
songs could have been written about My Baby._
But he had to admit that the syncopated, wailing tunes were stirring.
Though, of course, they weren't a patch on the old-fashioned waltz.
The air got very smoky. The syncopated rhythm went on.
_No conversation_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. _No good music. No
peace._ He wished the world had not become definitely so noisy.
Suddenly Mabelle Annesley broke off, smiling across the room at him,
and began to sing a song of Grieg's.
"_My swan--my fair one--_"
It was a favorite of Mr. Satterthwaite's. He liked the note of
ingenuous surprise at the end.
"_Wert only a swan then? A swan then?_"
After that, the party broke up. Madge offered drinks, while her father
picked up the discarded ukulele and began twanging it absent-mindedly.
The party exchanged good nights, drifted nearer and nearer to the door.
Everyone talked at once. Gerard Annesley slipped away unostentatiously,
leaving the others.
Outside the drawing room door, Mr. Satterthwaite bade Mrs. Graham a
ceremonious good night. There were two staircases, one close at hand,
the other at the end of a long corridor. It was by the latter that
Mr. Satterthwaite reached his room. Mrs. Graham and her son passed up
the stairs near at hand, where the quiet Gerard Annesley had already
preceded them.
"You'd better get your ukulele, Mabelle," said Madge. "You'll forget it
in the morning if you don't. You've got to make such an early start."
"Come on, Mr. Satterthwaite," said Doris Coles, seizing him
boisterously by one arm. "Early to bed--etcetera."
Madge took him by the other arm and all three ran down the corridor to
peals of Doris's laughter. They paused at the end to wait for David
Keeley, who was following at a much more sedate pace, turning out
electric lights as he came. The four of them went upstairs together.
* * * * *
Mr. Satterthwaite was just preparing to descend to the dining room for
breakfast on the following morning when there was a light tap on the
door and Madge Keeley entered. Her face was dead white and she was
shivering all over.
"Oh! Mr. Satterthwaite."
"My dear child, what's happened?" He took her hand.
"Mabelle--Mabelle Annesley--"
"Yes?"
What had happened? What? Something terrible--he knew that. Madge could
hardly get the words out.
"She--she hanged herself last night. On the back of her door. Oh! it's
too horrible." She broke down--sobbing.
Hanged herself. Impossible. Incomprehensible!
He said a few soothing, old-fashioned words to Madge and hurried
downstairs. He found David Keeley looking perplexed and incompetent.
"I've telephoned to the police, Satterthwaite. Apparently that's
got to be done. So the doctor said. He's just finished examining
the--the--Good Lord, it's a beastly business. She must have been
desperately unhappy--to do it that way. Queer, that song last night.
Swan Song, eh? She looked rather like a swan--a black swan."
Yes.
"Swan Song," repeated Keeley. "Shows it was in her mind, eh?"
"It would seem so--yes, certainly it would seem so."