"'TIS A SIREN."
And so the long golden morning hours rolled on, and the garden remained
untenanted. The sweet spring flowers--than which none are more beautiful
and fragrant, because so redolent of promise--wasted their perfume on
the gentle breezes that swayed their yielding blossoms; the birds' song
grew hushed and lapsed into silence as the repose of noontide settled
down upon them.
The sun fell in straight, level rays that were warm with a foretaste of
tropical heat; far away in the distance a faint silver line marked the
sea's limits, across which now and then a white sail flashed and was
gone. All nature lay hushed and stilled in that strange peace that
comes at the day's meridian, when the only sounds are those of the
under-world, the drowsy humming of an early humble-bee, the impatient
buzzing of a giant-fly, the bu-bu of multitudinous insects, the
chip-chip of the grasshopper, broken sharply across by the monotonous
hammer of the woodpecker.
Within the Folly all the lower rooms were alike deserted, not a ripple
of laughter or an echo of voices was to be heard; even the billiard hall
was void, the men, in the absence of the feminine element, having taken
themselves off to the stables, or down to the club-house, where lay the
yachts moored in harbour, curtsying gracefully to each succeeding
wavelet as it broke against the sharp outline of stem or stern.
But up in Mrs. Newbold's boudoir however, there were life and action
enough and to spare, for here were gathered Esther and her women guests,
while each pair of feminine lips were eager to contribute their share
to the general conversation.
Patricia Hildreth lay full length upon a couch pulled close to the
hearth, on which a fire of fragrant hemlock burned, in mockery of the
open window and in defiance of the dancing sunbeams. Miss Hildreth was
in all things luxurious, and revelled with almost barbaric delight in
warmth of atmosphere and colour.
Her slight but perfect figure was wrapped in a long loose cashmere robe
of softest azure, about which the dark bands of Russian sables swept in
classic lines, nestling closely about the firm white throat with
caressing touch, and falling back from the white arms and rounded
wrists. In her hand she held a dainty vellum-bound book, a collection of
sonnets much in vogue, and from which she read aloud at intervals some
special _jeu d'esprit_.
At her feet, on a low, luxurious pile of cushions, sat Dick Darling,
doing nothing, her hands clasped around her knees, her eyes feasting,
in true hero-worship, on the face of her divinity.
Before a large Psyche-glass stood Baby Leonard, absorbed in a row of
suggestive little porcelain pots, and breathlessly engaged in the
exciting process of "making up" in daylight, _à propos_ of the evening's
requirements.
Esther was resting in a lounging-chair with Mimi on her lap, the golden
curls falling about the pretty face bent down over a new picture-book;
and at the open window, on a low ottoman, sat Miss James, her hands
clasped idly upon her lap, her thin face pale and tired, her dark,
restless eyes fixed intently upon Miss Hildreth. Something in the
attitude bespoke mental depression and dread, that even the alert
watching of eyes and mouth could not disguise.
Dick's glib tongue had been running on aimlessly from topic to topic,
taking in a wide range of subjects, from the races at Jerome Park, to
the coming international yacht contest for the America Cup; and though
the remarks of her auditors were few and far between, Dick was perfectly
contented and asked nothing better than to listen to the sound of her
own voice.
She was interrupted before long, however, by Miss James's sharp and
rather high voice addressing no one in particular:
"Dick is certainly a living personation of Tennyson's 'Brook,' isn't
she? 'for men may come, and men may go, but she goes on for ever!'"
To which Dick, arrested in mid-career, retorted sharply: "I can't say
that I see any men about anywhere, either coming or going. The wish must
be first cousin to Rosalie's thought. Good gracious, Baby! how much more
rouge do you mean to annex? You're blushing like a peony now, and one
eyebrow is half a mile longer than the other. You make me think of Jack
Howard's story of Miss Grantham, the American beauty of London, you
know."
"No, we _don't_ know," broke in Esther, languidly; "perhaps you'll be so
good as to enlighten us."
"_Town Optics_ cribbed it from him," continued Dick, once more in her
element, "and positively quoted it as true. It appears some magnificent
masher asked Cecilia Grantham if she didn't find her abnormally long
eye-lashes rather inconvenient at times? To which Cis replied, smiling
sweetly, 'Why, certainly; I am always obliged to have them borne in
front of me when I go upstairs, for fear I shall trip upon them!' And
will you believe me," went on Miss Darling, when the laugh evoked had
died out, "that brainless masher has gone about ever since getting it
off as a double extra specimen of American repartee, and all the time it
never took place at all except in Jack Howard's budding intellect. I
think _Town Optics_ owes him one for that."
"I can cap your story by a better, Dick," retorted Esther, rousing
herself and sitting up very straight, "and mine is absolutely true, for
it happened to George's sister, when she was in London, oh, ever so long
ago, before the war."
"Ancient history!" groaned Miss Darling, resignedly. "Drive ahead,
Esther, only you are awfully behind the age."
"A story's a story, no matter when it happened," replied Mrs. Newbold, a
little confused in her grammar, "and you are not obliged to listen,
Dick."
"Oh, yes, but I shall," remarked that young person--"listen and
remember, and get it off with effect as first-hand, at my next big
spread. Go on, Esther, do, like a daisy."
"Well, you must know, my dears, that George's sister was a very pretty
girl----"
"Oh!" interpolated Miss Darling, making tragic efforts to control her
astonishment.
"Yes, very pretty," went on Esther, severely, "and when she was in
London she was presented at Court, and went out a great deal, and that's
when old Sir Piers first saw her and wanted to make her Lady Tracey."
"For her sins! I am sure there could be no other reason for such a
punishment," again interjected Miss Darling, piously.
"Ah, but Sir Piers was a gay young baronet in those days," said Esther,
with decision. "_Any_ girl might have hesitated before she gave him his
_congé_. However, that's neither here nor there. Margaret Newbold was a
very great favourite; and one evening, at a big dinner party at a
tremendously swell house, she was given a proportionately great grandee
as a cavalier. This very high-bred personage began by staring at her, up
and down and round and about, through his eye-glasses and over them; and
when he found this was not in the least discomposing to the young woman,
but that she talked on glibly to her left-hand neighbour, he gave a
loud 'ahem!' and said, so that all the company might hear:
'Ah--miss--ah--I perceive, though you are an American, you speak English
quite fluently--ah----' Margaret eyed him for a moment over the rim of
her wine-glass, and then replied, with calm distinctness and an air of
inward satisfaction: 'Well--yes--ah--Mr.--I do. You see, the missionary
who converted our tribe was an Englishman, and he taught us the
language.' Then she went on eating her fish, quite undisturbed by the
shouts of laughter that went up at the expense of her unfortunate
questioner."
"Served him right, too," cried Miss Darling, indignantly. "I never heard
of anything so caddish. We might just as well ask, in an off-hand,
jovial kind of a way, if it's because they have so many H's lying round
loose, that they forget to pick 'em up and use 'em in the right places!
And one might suppose so, you know, with reason, judging from some of
the specimens we get over here."
"It's very trying," broke in Baby Leonard, plaintively; "I _can't_ get
both sides of my face to look alike, and this _crème impératrice_ is so
sticky! What shall I do?"
"Leave it all alone," cried Miss Darling, brusquely. "You can't improve
on nature, Baby--it's no use! 'Bad's the best,' as my old mammy-nurse
used to say. You won't make your eyes any the larger or prettier by
painting them a distinct violet, and your mouth's a far better shape
left to its own lines; you can't make a Cupid's bow out of it, try as
you may."
"Only listen to Dick the virtuous!" laughed Esther. "She positively
waxes eloquent on the shams of the hour, and is developing a soul above
frivolities! We shall have her quoting Carlyle next; or, stay, I know
what it will be. What's that sentimental couplet, Dick, tucked carefully
away beneath your pot of 'cherry-lip,' in your new silver-mounted
_toilette des ongles_? Is this the way it runs:
'Why send me to this little girl?
Sure such a gift were silly!
Can I add lustre to the pearl,
Or paint the gilded lily?'"
"Oh, Esther, you're a brute!" cried poor Dick, the tears actually in her
eyes, her cheeks very red. "How could you? It's only--only some stupid
little lines about a still more stupid joke. They don't mean _me_ at
all."
"And then, fancy Dick being compared to a pearl, and a lily--a painted
lily!" exclaimed Miss James, in her most disagreeable voice, and with a
slow smile creeping over her face.
"Oh, Esther, how could you!" cried poor Dick again; but Mrs. Newbold
only laughed.
"Don't be cynical and fault-finding, then, my dear Dick," she said,
quietly, drawing one of Mimi's golden curls through her fingers; "it
doesn't suit you, my dear, nor your little round, brown, winsome face."
"Since poetry seems to be the order of the day, listen to this," broke
in Miss Hildreth, in her clear musical voice, and lifting her eyes from
the tiny vellum book she held:
"'Near my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels would not buy from me.
'Tis a siren, a brown siren,
Playing on a lute of amber by the margin of a sea.
"In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes grow strong
With the dampness, I hear music--hear a quiet, plaintive song--
A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some immortal wrong.
"Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a soul that pleads in vain,
Of a damnèd soul repentant, that would fain be pure again!
And I lie awake and listen to the music of her pain.
"And whence comes this mournful music? Whence, unless it chance to be
From the siren, the brown siren,
Playing on her lute of amber by the margin of a sea?'"
Silence fell upon the little group as Patricia's voice died away. For a
moment all were held by the spell of the poet's words, with their deep
undernote of passionate protest. The present faded out of the line of
mental vision, replaced by the past, within whose mystery of silence,
somewhere a great wrong lay hidden, and unappeased.
Had the poet known of it, in all its details, and kept inviolate this
secret of another's existence, or had he only guessed at its outlines,
fearing to fill in the lights and shadows, lest imagination should fall
short of reality?
So vivid, indeed, was the impression produced, it seemed only a
continuation of the tragedy when Miss Hildreth spoke again, slowly and
without any apparent reason, save inward impulse.
"I have known one such woman once, to whom all life and all time was but
the cry of 'a damnèd soul,' crying out ceaselessly against 'an immortal
wrong.' Did our poet know her story, I wonder, when he wrote of his
'brown siren'? But no; this poor soul has had no one to sing out her
wrongs, or open up the story of the treachery that blasted her life.
Alone she has had to bear her burden, and alone she must bear it to the
very end."
As Miss Hildreth spoke, Dick Darling crept close to her side, and knelt
there, listening eagerly, with quick-coming breath, to the disjointed
sentences. In the deep interest of the moment no one looked towards the
window where sat Rosalie James, or noticed the intense nervous restraint
she was exercising. Her face was absolutely colourless; her hands
pressed so hard one upon the other that they left blue marks upon the
soft flesh; her eyes were strained and feverish; she bent forward in an
alert, expectant attitude, as of one awaiting, yet not certain of, some
preconceived revelation. At the Psyche-mirror sat Baby Leonard, still
placidly trying one artistic preparation after another, and totally
oblivious to the tense atmosphere of suppressed excitement about her.
"And who was she? Is she alive?" asked Dick, her whisper catching up
Miss Hildreth's falling inflection, and sustaining the interest of the
moment. "Who was she? Is she alive? Where did you know her?"
"Yes, she is alive; oh, yes, indeed, she is alive," answered Patricia,
still in a retrospective tone; "and I knew her in Petersburg when I was
last there--such a little time ago, as it seems now."
"Was she beautiful?" Again it was Dick's voice that asked, and
Patricia's that replied.
"She was very beautiful--so beautiful that no one could withstand her
loveliness. And her beauty became her curse; ah, what a curse, since it
attracted the attention of one so high above her that his lightest
regard was an insult! What but bitter wrong and crime could be the
outcome of a love proffered by a scion of the Imperial house to a woman
of the people? Beauty is a grand leveller, it is true, but it cannot
level the iron hand and cruel laws of Russia. It was the old story--the
old, old, pitiful story--that comes to every woman once in her
lifetime, and that each woman translates as best suits her desires--the
story that makes a heaven upon earth, a paradise within our hearts."
Again the musical tones died away in a sigh of regret, and again Dick
cried out in her quick, absorbed whisper:
"Is there any more to tell? What happened? What was the end?"
"What any woman might have looked for, save a woman blinded by love, and
a man absorbed by passion. They lived in a fool's paradise for an all
too brief space, and then, before the golden sheen had fallen from their
vision, while the woman still played with fate and the man toyed with
destiny, the blow fell--sudden, sharp, omnipotent, as is the nature of
Russia's potency. Taken away from his very arms, her marriage annulled
by Imperial ukase, her life ruined, her soul lost in a whirlwind of
injustice and despair, what wonder that her woman's nature revolted, and
that throwing aside the narrower swathing bands of law and
conventionality, she stood forth, bold and free and savage, and struck
down her craven lover in the very zenith of his manhood, with a hand
that never faltered, as it drove home the steel to his very heart?"
Miss Hildreth had grown strangely excited as she told the tragic story;
she rose up now and stood at her full height, the clinging cashmeres
marking every line and curve of her beautiful form; her face was pale as
death, and beneath her dark brows her eyes gleamed with their old
dangerous fire; she lifted her hands and brought them together before
her, throwing them out palm upwards in passionate protest; her voice was
low and concentrated, vibrating with intolerance.
"And I who tell you this," she continued, "I speak as only one can who
has looked upon such suffering as hers; who has beheld the soul drink to
the very dregs of the cup of renunciation, despair, desertion; seen it
touch the very heights and depths of mental anguish, and wandered with
it so far in the paths of darkness that even crime seemed but justice,
if it would in any way balance the debt of honour."
She faltered suddenly, and turning with quick impetuosity, sank back
upon the couch, her light mocking laugh ringing out discordantly as she
concluded.
"Was I not right, Dick? The poet must have known this story to write so
tellingly of an 'immortal wrong, and of a soul repentant longing to be
pure again.'"
Miss Darling had started back when Patricia had arisen, and though she
remained kneeling, her eyes never left the other's face. Across the
room, in the full warm glow of the noontide sun, Miss James sat
shivering, but watching ever and always with the same look of
expectancy, and yet of certainty, on her face.
As Miss Hildreth's little laugh struck so harshly across the compressed
emotion of the moment, and made, as it were, a half-bar of discord in
the tragic score, Dick Darling shuddered, and put out her hand, as
though to ward off some impending danger.
"Don't," she cried, her brown face paling and flushing alternatively,
"don't laugh in that dreadful way; oh, Miss Hildreth, it hurts me!" She
crept a little nearer to her and laid one hand on the pale blue
draperies. "That is not all, not all of the story, it cannot be all.
Tell me the rest of it. Tell me her name!"
Dick's whisper was imperative, imperious, and Miss Hildreth, fingering
nervously the vellum-covered volume, felt the force of the girl's candid
eyes, and honest, earnest gaze.
"Her name"--she said, slowly and hesitatingly--"her name----"
But before she could complete her sentence Esther started up, putting
Marianne hastily down, and came towards her.
"You have said quite enough," she exclaimed, excitedly. "Patty, Patty,
let me beg you to be careful."
As she spoke, the door behind the swinging _portières_ opened slightly,
unperceived by any one except Miss James, over whose face the same
sneering smile crept out again. Miss Hildreth looked up at Mrs. Newbold
with defiance in her eyes and on her lips.
"My dear Esther, surely you are a little too dramatic. Why should not I
gratify Miss Dick's romantic inquisitiveness? Her name--the name of this
woman--was--is--well, let us call it Adèle Lallovich."
As she uttered the words clearly and distinctly, the _portières_ were
pushed hastily aside, and George Newbold's voice preceded himself in
person, exclaiming:
"May we come in, my dear? We are bored to the verge of insanity."
And crossing the threshold he held back the curtains, and Vladimir
Mellikoff stepped into their midst. As he did so a sudden quick sigh
broke from Miss James, she got up hastily and passing down the room met
his cool impenetrable glance with the slightest possible recognition,
and upward gesture of her hand. He stepped forward to open the door for
her, and when it closed upon her and he returned to the little group, a
keen observer might have noticed a slight increase in the brilliancy of
his eyes, a touch of triumph in the smile with which he bent over Miss
Hildreth's hand, held out in greeting to him.
Patricia's face, however, looked cold and hard; and the line of dark fur
lay about her white throat like the shadow of a coming calamity.