The Joy of Interest
The next morning the sun soared radiant. Carleigh, handed his stick by
his valet, was conscious, too, of a personal soaring radiance: a
condition so unusual and unexpected that it metaphorically struck him in
the face.
"Oh, no," he reminded his lovelornity with emphasis, "it cannot possibly
be!" Yet he knew joy to be all over him.
Not even the fourteen rare old engravings of early Christian martyrs and
their martyrdom, with which the corridor was cheerfully embellished,
could dampen his bubbling gaiety.
One cannot, indeed, take much interest in hangings and burnings and
other tortures when one is going to have an hour alone in the open with
a pretty woman who says things that--as the duke put it--you wouldn't
think she would.
In the hall below he found the great black staghound--sole symbol of her
mourning--waiting in majestic solitude beside a chair that bore a
slender switch of a cane and a rough gray Burberry.
Mrs. Darling, herself, was not there; but the hound, the cane, and the
coat--the morning being cold--showed that she had not forgotten her
appointment.
Carleigh strolled over to the fire and lighted a cigarette. He felt so
delightedly content. Presently his hostess swept quickly in from
another room and nodded at him with the good cheer that no one had of
late dared exhibit before him.
"You're going out with Nina," she said, evidently well-posted. "We're
all driving to lunch with the men in the open. Can't you and she find
your way there, too?"
"We'll try, but don't wait for us," he answered, really blithely.
Then it abruptly rushed over him how much he had been eased of his pain
in these few hours, and he went up and kissed Lady Bellingdown's cheek
impulsively, with: "Oh, Aunt Kitty! When will you have a spare minute
for me, alone? I've such a lot to tell you."
In his way he was as uncontrolled as Nina, and quite as given to
bursting forth in unwary speech.
"Tell it all to her, dear boy," she advised, looking up into his flushed
brightness. "She's such a sweet, sympathetic woman. And she'll help you.
She helps every man. She has wonderful ways with her."
"You recommend her as a confidante?"
"Yes, indeed."
"But why, aunt? Why?"
"Oh, she has a way with her that brings men out of themselves. I don't
know just what it is, because I'm a woman, and she never has it with
women. But I know that she has it. She was always like that. And then
she grew more so after her marriage. There was a while when no one knew
just what the end would be, but she pulled through quite straight."
"There was a story?"
"When a woman is magnetic, my dear Caryll, there is always a story."
"Who will tell it me?"
"She will, if you ask her, I fancy."
He smiled again. "I am so interested. If you knew the relief--the
rest--the absolute joy of feeling an interest in something again!"
"I know, dear boy. It's been bad. But Nina will help you. She helps
every one. Ah, here she is now!"
And she was; tall and withy as a willow-wand; more wondrous, it seemed
to Caryll, by daylight than nightlight, because more clearly seen.
"Good-morning! Good-morning!" she cried, a hand to each. "What a
glorious day! The bang-bang of the guns woke lazy me; but I thanked
Heaven that I was a woman and went to sleep again directly."
Lady Bellingdown laughed, and kissing her hand to both, vanished quickly
through a curtained archway opposite.
Then Mrs. Darling all at once altered. First she glanced at Carleigh,
and then at the floor. "Have you been waiting long?" she queried.
"Hours," he declared, gloating over her confusion. He picked up the coat
and offered her the cane. With a quick, fleeting smile, she took both;
and then they were off; the funereal Tara at their heels.
Across the Italian garden they went, and then across the Dutch garden,
and the French garden to the genuine English park. When their feet
clapped gaily on the smooth, sodden mosaic of leaves, he turned to her,
exclaiming:
"Life has become suddenly full again for me. I am really happy. And yet
this time yesterday I was a misanthrope--a blighted creature. Think of
that! It is your witchcraft."
But she shook her head.
"No," she contradicted firmly. "Not my doing at all. Manlike you wish to
attribute all good and evil to some cause. But as a matter of fact you
were already cured. I am but the 'top-stones of the corner.'"
"No, no, not at all," he denied gravely. "I was blighted, I--"
"Then you are blighted still," she declared. "What has happened is that
you are just enough intoxicated to forget for a little. I've benumbed
you. That's all."
"I beg to differ."
"Differ to beggary, if you will. Nevertheless, I know. I know I am
right."
"I am divinely happy. I--" he began again. But she went on unheeding:
"We shall flirt, you and I, and we shall go pretty far. But we shall not
fall in love and we shall not marry, because of two very excellent
reasons."
"And they are?"
"A man and a woman."
"What woman? What man?"
She tossed her head in a way that might have signified anything.
"You mean that we love others--you and I?" he hazarded.
She laughed distractingly.
"Perhaps you love," he pursued. "But I am heart-free."
She walked on in silence.
"I don't ask the name of the man, for that's your affair. But no woman
lives who can stand in the way of my bolting with you or marrying you if
I choose."
"You are very positive," she said at length. "What if I am the woman and
you are the man?"
For a second or two he stared blankly. "Oh," he said, crestfallen. "I
see. Thanks!"
"Don't let us discuss such serious subjects as ourselves," she proposed.
"Look at the sky and the swans--but be careful not to slip--and
recollect that forgetfulness was the nectar upon which the gods
subsisted."
"Quite so. There!" He squared his shoulders, but he looked at neither
the sky nor the swans. He looked directly at her.
"I suppose I have just proposed to you and been refused; but, after all,
what does it matter? Already I have forgotten the trifling episode. I've
drunk of the gods' nectar. It saves one's reason occasionally. Because I
have been able to forget, I have been able to live."
"You deserve the cross for heroism," she said. "I think you are
wonderful."
He colored becomingly. "Spare my modesty," he pleaded. Then: "Look here!
Now that we're quite alone, tell me your story."
"Tell me yours first."
"Oh, mine's so very hideous. But I don't mind telling you. My fiancee's
mother, who had been out of the country for years, came back to find her
little girl grown up, so she--well, she managed to break it all off--"
His voice slipped a note, and, turning, she saw that his face was
working.
"I can't tell you more," he said, with a choke. "I'm not as brave as I
thought. I can't help remembering. You'll find plenty to tell you that I
loved the mother. She wasn't very old, you know."
"Why didn't you marry her?"
At her question he stopped short in the path.
"What's the matter?" she asked, turning.
"Why, I never thought of that way out," he answered, going white and red
alternately.
"What a funny man you are!" cried Nina, startled. "Perhaps you will
marry the mother yet. How old is she?"
"About thirty-seven."
"And rich?"
"Oh, yes. She's an American." As if riches and Americans were
synonymous.
"Better marry her."
"I like you better just at present," returned Carleigh.
"Thanks, awfully. But I've told you what woman will stand in the way of
your serious views about me. Besides, I'd never dare risk such a man as
you. Everything will right itself, some day."
"Nothing can be right ever."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Ah, you've not told me all the story then?"
"Of course not. I never shall. I never can."
For a few steps they walked on in silence.
"Do tell me your--your story," he faltered. "Tell me what you can--what
you'd like to."
"My story? My stories, you mean. I'm all stories." And she laughed her
merry laugh.
"But _the_ story?"
"Oh, _the_ story!" She paused for the space of a heart-beat, and her
eyes were serious. "Even that began with my birth," she continued. "It's
rather long, you see, to tell on a short walk. It's a war story. I was
born to battle; and not being a man, and medieval, was appointed to
eternal combat with myself."
"With victory for the prize," he suggested.
She thought for a second; then dropped her head. "I don't know. No one
can tell. Perhaps--perhaps not."
"But you can tell me some of it--me," he insisted.
"But it's so hopeless," she said wearily. "And you're really too young
to know what I mean when I talk. Then, too, it's such a horrid story.
Just as yours is, you know.
"Mixed love and straight-out killing haven't been respectable since the
time when Catherine de' Medici shoved every pleasant way of getting on
under a cloud. How I do wish I had lived when you could kill a man by
shaking hands! If that were possible now, I know what I'd do to lots of
men."
"What?" asked Carleigh, quickly.
"I'd never shake hands any more. I'd kiss them all instead. It would be
so humane and blameless--and nice."
He felt all the blood in him bound out of his heart to meet her whimsy.
"You darling!" he cried ecstatically. "What could be nicer? A fig for
your tragedies. We'll just flirt--and--and--"
He seized her and was drawing her into a close embrace. His face was
scarlet, his pupils distended.
"The guns are just there on the hill," she said, ever so calmly. "Better
wait!"
Carleigh released her with reluctance, but his expanded pupils were
still devouring her.
"I _am_ a new man," he whispered passionately. "Darling, oh, darling!
I'm so glad I came."
Neither of them saw the tall form of Lord Kneedrock, who, at a little
distance stood watching them, a bitterly satirical smile upon his lips.