impression of unrelieved gloom as you came around that corner,” he
assured her.
“I--I haven’t a very good memory for being unhappy,” Daphne
confessed remorsefully, a guilty rose staining her to her brow at
the memory of that exultant chant.
He threw back his head with a sudden shout of laughter.
“These are glad tidings! I’d rather find a pagan than a Puritan at
Green Gardens any day. Let’s both have a poor memory. Do you mind
if I smoke?”
“No,” she replied, “but do you mind if I ask you what you are doing
here?”
“Not a bit.” He lit the stubby brown pipe, curving his hand
dexterously to shelter it from the little breeze. He had the most
beautiful hands that she had ever seen, slim and brown and fine;
they looked as though they would be miraculously strong--and
miraculously gentle. “I came to see whether there was ‘honey still
for tea,’ Mistress Dryad!”
“Honey--for tea?” she echoed wonderingly. “Was that why you were
looking at the hive?”
He puffed meditatively. “Well--partly. It’s a quotation from a
poem. Ever read Rupert Brooke?”
“Oh, yes, yes.” Her voice tripped in its eagerness. “I know one by
heart--
“‘If I should die think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. That shall be----’”
He cut in on the magical little voice roughly.
“Ah, what damned nonsense! Do you suppose he’s happy, in his
foreign field, that golden lover? Why shouldn’t even the dead be
homesick? No, no--he was sick for home in Germany when he wrote
that poem of mine--he’s sicker for it in Heaven, I’ll warrant.”
He pulled himself up swiftly at the look of amazement in Daphne’s
eyes. “I’ve clean forgotten my manners,” he confessed ruefully.
“No, don’t get that flying look in your eyes; I swear that I’ll be
good. It’s a long time--it’s a long time since I’ve talked to any
one who needed gentleness. If you knew what need I had of it, you’d
stay a little while, I think.”
“Of course I’ll stay,” she said. “I’d love to, if you want me to.”
“I want you to more than I’ve ever wanted anything that I can
remember.” His tone was so matter-of-fact that Daphne thought that
she must have imagined the words. “Now, can’t we make ourselves
comfortable for a little while? I’d feel safer if you weren’t
standing there ready for instant flight! Here’s a nice bit of
grass--and the wall for a back----”
Daphne glanced anxiously at the green muslin frock. “It’s--it’s
pretty hard to be comfortable without cushions,” she submitted
diffidently.
The man yielded again to laughter. “Are even Dryads afraid to
spoil their frocks? Cushions it shall be. There are some extra ones
in the chest in the East Indian room, aren’t there?”
Daphne let the basket slip through her fingers, her eyes black
through sheer surprise.
“But how did you know--how did you know about the lacquer chest?”
she whispered breathlessly.
“Oh, devil take me for a blundering ass!” He stood considering
her forlornly for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders, with
the brilliant and disarming smile. “The game’s up, thanks to my
inspired lunacy! But I’m going to trust you not to say that you’ve
seen me. I know about the lacquer chest because I always kept my
marbles there.”
“Are you Stephen Fane?”
At the awed whisper the man bowed low, all mocking grace, his hand
on his heart, the sun burnishing his tawny head.
“Oh-h!” breathed Daphne. She bent to pick up the wicker basket, her
small face white and hard.
“Wait!” said Stephen Fane. His face was white and hard, too. “You
are right to go--entirely, absolutely right--but I am going to beg
you to stay. I don’t know what you’ve heard about me; however vile
it is, it’s less than the truth----”
“I have heard nothing of you,” said Daphne, holding her
gold-wreathed head high, “but five years ago I was not allowed to
come to Green Gardens for weeks because I mentioned your name. I
was told that it was not a name to pass decent lips.”
Something terrible leaped in those burned-out eyes, and died.
“I had not thought they would use their hate to lash a child,” he
said. “They were quite right--and you, too. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” replied Daphne clearly. She started down the path,
but at its bend she turned to look back--because she was seventeen,
and it was June, and she remembered his laughter. He was standing
quite still by the golden straw beehive, but he had thrown one arm
across his eyes, as though to shut out some intolerable sight. And
then, with a soft little rush, she was standing beside him.
“How--how do we get the cushions?” she demanded breathlessly.
Stephen Fane dropped his arm, and Daphne drew back a little at the
sudden blaze of wonder in his face.
“Oh,” he whispered voicelessly. “Oh, you Loveliness!” He took a
step toward her, and then stood still, clinching his brown hands.
Then he thrust them deep in his pockets, standing very straight.
“I do think,” he said carefully, “I do think you had better go.
The fact that I have tried to make you stay simply proves the
particular type of rotter that I am. Good-bye--I’ll never forget
that you came back.”
“I am not going,” said Daphne sternly. “Not if you beg me. Because
you need me. And no matter how many wicked things you have done,
there can’t be anything as wicked as going away when someone needs
you. How do we get the cushions?”
“Oh, my wise Dryad!” His voice broke on laughter, but Daphne saw
that his lashes were suddenly bright with tears. “Stay, then--why,
even I cannot harm you. God himself can’t grudge me this little
space of wonder: He knows how far I’ve come for it--how I’ve fought
and struggled and ached to win it--how in dirty lands and dirty
places I’ve dreamed of summer twilight in a still garden--and
England!”
“Didn’t you dream of me?” asked Daphne wistfully, with a little
catch of reproach.
He laughed again unsteadily. “Why, who could ever dream of you, my
Wonder? You are a thousand thousand dreams come true.”
Daphne bestowed on him a tremulous and radiant smile. “Please let
us get the cushions. I think I am a little tired.”
“And I am a graceless fool! There used to be a pane of glass cut
out in one of the south casement windows. Shall we try that?”
“Please, yes. How did you find it, Stephen?” She saw again that
thrill of wonder on his face, but his voice was quite steady.
“I didn’t find it; I did it! It was uncommonly useful, getting in
that way sometimes, I can tell you. And, by the Lord Harry, here
it is. Wait a minute, Loveliness; I’ll get through and open the
south door for you--no chance that way of spoiling the frock.”
He swung himself up with the sure grace of a cat, smiled at
her--vanished--it was hardly a minute later that she heard the
bolts dragging back in the south door, and he flung it wide.
The sunlight streamed in through the deep hall and stretched
hesitant fingers into the dusty quiet of the great East Indian
room, gilding the soft tones of the faded chintz, touching very
gently the polished furniture and the dim prints on the walls. He
swung across the threshold without a word, Daphne tiptoeing behind
him.
“How still it is,” he said in a hushed voice. “How sweet it smells!”
“It’s the potpourri in the Canton jars,” she told him shyly. “I
always made it every summer for Lady Audrey; she thought I did it
better than any one else. I think so, too.” She flushed at the
mirth in his eyes, but held her ground sturdily. “Flowers are
sweeter for you if you love them--even dead ones,” she explained
bravely.
“They would be dead, indeed, if they were not sweet for you.” Her
cheeks burned bright at the low intensity of his voice, but he
turned suddenly away. “Oh, there she sails--there she sails still,
my beauty. Isn’t she the proud one, though--straight into the
wind!” He hung over the little ship model, thrilled as any child.
“_The Flying Lady_; see where it’s painted on her? Grandfather
gave it to me when I was seven--he had it from his father when he
was six. Lord, how proud I was!” He stood back to see it better,
frowning a little. “One of those ropes is wrong; any fool could
tell that.” His hands hovered over it for a moment--dropped.
“No matter--the new owners are probably not seafarers! The
lacquer chest is at the far end, isn’t it? Yes, here. Are three
enough--four? We’re off!” But still he lingered, sweeping the great
room with his dark eyes. “It’s full of all kinds of junk; they
never liked it--no period, you see. I had the run of it--I loved
it as though it were alive; it was alive for me. From Elizabeth’s
day down, all the family adventurers brought their treasures
here--beaten gold and hammered silver, mother-of-pearl and peacock
feathers, strange woods and stranger spices, porcelains and
embroideries and blown glass. There was always an adventurer
somewhere in each generation--and however far he wandered, he came
back to Green Gardens to bring his treasures home. When I was a
yellow-headed imp of Satan, hiding my marbles in the lacquer chest,
I used to swear that when I grew up I would bring home the finest
treasure of all, if I had to search the world from end to end. And
now the last adventurer has come home to Green Gardens--and he has
searched the world from end to end--and he is empty-handed.”
“No, no,” whispered Daphne. “He has brought home the greatest
treasure of all, that adventurer. He has brought home the beaten
gold of his love and the hammered silver of his dreams--and he has
brought them from very far.”
“He had brought greater treasures than those to you, lucky room,”
said the last of the adventurers. “You can never be sad again;
you will always be gay and proud--because for just one moment he
brought you the gold of her hair and the silver of her voice.”
“He is talking great nonsense, room,” said a very small voice, “but
it is beautiful nonsense, and I am a wicked girl, and I hope that
he will talk some more. And please, I think we will go into the
garden and see.”
All the way back down the flagged path to the herb garden they were
quiet; even after he had arranged the cushions against the rose-red
wall, even after he had stretched out at full length beside her and
lighted another pipe.
After a while he said, staring at the straw hive: “There used to be
a jolly little fat brown one that was a great pal of mine. How long
do bees live?”
“I don’t know,” she answered vaguely, and after a long pause, full
of quiet, pleasant odours from the herb garden, and the happy
noises of small things tucking themselves away for the night, and
the faint drift of tobacco smoke, she asked: “What was it about
‘honey still for tea’?”
“Oh, that!” He raised himself on one elbow so that he could see her
better. “It was a poem I came across while I was in East Africa;
someone sent a copy of Rupert Brooke’s things to a chap out there,
and this one fastened itself around me like a vise. It starts where
he’s sitting in a café in Berlin with a lot of German Jews around
him, swallowing down their beer; and suddenly he remembers. All the
lost, unforgettable beauty comes back to him in that dirty place;
it gets him by the throat. It got me, too.
“‘Ah, God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees....
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh, yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?’”
“That’s beautiful,” she said, “but it hurts.”
“Thank God you’ll never know how it hurts, little Golden Heart in
quiet gardens. But for some of us, caught like rats in the trap of
the ugly fever we called living, it was black torture, and yet our
dear delight to remember the deep meadows we had lost--to wonder if
there was honey still for tea.”
“Stephen, won’t you tell me about it--won’t that help?”
And suddenly someone else looked at her through those haunted
eyes--a little boy, terrified and forsaken. “Oh, I have no right to
soil you with it. But I came back to tell someone about it; I had
to. I had to wait until Father and Audrey went away. I knew they’d
hate to see me--she was my step-mother, you know, and she always
loathed me, and he never cared. In East Africa I used to stay awake
at night thinking that I might die, and that no one in England
would ever care; no one would know how I had loved her. It was
worse than dying to think that.”
“But why couldn’t you come back to Green Gardens--why couldn’t you
make them see, Stephen?”
“Why, what was there to see? When they sent me down from Cambridge
for that dirty little affair, I was only nineteen--and they told
me I had disgraced my name and Green Gardens and my country--and I
went mad with pride and shame, and swore I’d drag their precious
name through the dirt of every country in the world. And I did--and
I did.”
His head was buried in his arms, but Daphne heard. It seemed
strange indeed to her that she felt no shrinking and no terror;
only great pity for what he had lost, great grief for what he might
have had. For a minute she forgot that she was Daphne, the heedless
and gay-hearted, and that he was a broken and an evil man. For a
minute he was a little lad, and she was his lost mother.
“Don’t mind, Stephen,” she whispered to him, “don’t mind. Now you
have come home; now it is all done with, that ugliness. Please,
please don’t mind.”
“No, no,” said the stricken voice, “you don’t know, you don’t know,
thank God. But I swear I’ve paid--I swear I have. When the others
used to take their dirty drugs to make them forget, they’d dream
of strange paradises, unknown heavens; but through the haze and
mist that they brought, I would remember--I would remember. The
filth and the vileness would fade and dissolve--and I would see
the sun-dial, with the roses on it, warm in the sun, and smell
the clove pinks in the kitchen border, and touch the cresses
by the brook, cool and green and wet. All the sullen drums and
whining flutes would sink to silence, and I would hear the little
yellow-headed cousin of the vicar singing in the twilight, singing.
‘Weep you no more, sad fountains’ and ‘Hark, hark, the lark.’ And
the painted yellow faces and the little wicked hands and perfumed
fans would vanish and I would see again the gay beauty of the lady
who hung above the mantel in the long drawing room, the lady who
laughed across the centuries in her white muslin frock, with eyes
that matched the blue ribbon in her wind-blown curls--the lady who
was as young and lovely as England, for all the years! Oh, I would
remember, I would remember! It was twilight, and I was hurrying
home through the dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell
ringing quietly somewhere, and a moth flying by brushed against my
face with velvet--and I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering
white, and see the first star swinging low above the trees, and
lower still, and brighter still, the lights of home.... And then
before my very eyes they would fade, they would fade, dimmer and
dimmer--they would flicker and go out, and I would be back again,
with tawdriness and shame and vileness fast about me; and I would
pay.”
“But now you have paid enough,” Daphne told him. “Oh, surely,
surely, you have paid enough. Now you have come home--now you can
forget.”
“No,” said Stephen Fane. “Now I must go.”
“Go?” At the startled echo he raised his head.
“What else?” he asked. “Did you think that I would stay?”
“But I do not want you to go.” Her lips were white, but she spoke
very clearly.
Stephen Fane never moved, but his eyes, dark and wondering, rested
on her like a caress.
“Oh, my little Loveliness, what dream is this?”
“You must not go away again; you must not.”
“I am baser than I thought,” he said, very low. “I have made you
pity me, I who forfeited your lovely pity this long time. It
cannot even touch me now. I have sat here like a dark Othello
telling tales to a small white Desdemona, and you, God help me,
have thought me tragic and abused. You shall not think that. In
a few minutes I will be gone; I’ll not have you waste a dream on
me. Listen; there is nothing vile that I’ve not done--nothing, do
you hear? Not clean sin, like murder; I’ve cheated at cards, and
played with loaded dice, and stolen the rings off the fingers of an
Argentine Jewess who----” His voice twisted and broke before the
lovely mercy in the frightened eyes that still met his so bravely.
“Why, Stephen?”
“So that I could buy my dreams. So that I could purchase peace
with little dabs of brown in a pipe-bowl, little puffs of white in
the palm of my hand, little drops of liquid on a ball of cotton.
So that I could drug myself with dirt--and forget the dirt and
remember England.”
He rose to his feet with that swift grace of his, and Daphne rose,
too, slowly.
“I am going now; will you walk to the gate with me?”
He matched his long step to hers, watching the troubled wonder on
her face intently.
“How old are you, my Dryad?”
“I am seventeen.”
“Seventeen! Oh, God be good to us, I had forgotten that one could
be seventeen. What’s that?”
He paused, suddenly alert, listening to a distant whistle, sweet on
the summer air.
“Oh, that--that is Robin.”
“Ah----” His smile flashed, tender and ironic. “And who is Robin?”
“He is--just Robin. He is down from Cambridge for a week, and I
told him that he might walk home with me.”
“Then I must be off quickly. Is he coming to this gate?”
“No, to the south one.”
“Listen to me, my Dryad--are you listening?” For her face was
turned away.
“Yes,” said Daphne.
“You are going to forget me, to forget this afternoon, to forget
everything but Robin whistling through the summer twilight.”
“No,” said Daphne.
“Yes; because you have a very poor memory about unhappy things!
You told me so. But just for a minute after I have gone you will
remember that now all is very well with me, because I have found
the deep meadows--and honey still for tea--and you. You are to
remember that for just one minute, will you? And now good-bye----”
She tried to say the words, but she could not. For a moment he
stood staring down at the white pathos of the small face, and then
he turned away. But when he came to the gate, he paused and put his
arms about the wall, as though he would never let it go, laying
his cheek against the sun-warmed bricks, his eyes fast closed. The
whistling came nearer, and he stirred, put his hand on the little
painted gate, vaulted across it lightly, and was gone. She turned
at Robin’s quick step on the walk.
“Ready, dear? What are you staring at?”
“Nothing. Robin, did you ever hear of Stephen Fane?”
He nodded grimly.
“Do you know--do you know what he is doing now?”
“Doing now?” He stared at her blankly. “What on earth do you
mean? He’s been dead for months; killed in the campaign in East
Africa--only decent thing he ever did in his life. Why?”
Daphne never stirred. She stood quite still, staring at the painted
gate. Then she said, very carefully: “Someone thought--someone
thought that they had seen him--quite lately.”
Robin laughed comfortingly. “No use looking so scared about it, my
blessed child. Perhaps they did. The War Office made all kinds of
ghastly blunders; it was a quick step from ‘missing in action’ to
‘killed.’ And he probably would have been jolly glad of a chance
to drop out quietly and have everyone think he was done for.”
Daphne never took her eyes from the gate. “Yes,” she said quietly,
“I suppose he would. Will you get my basket, Robin? I left it by
the beehive. There are some cushions that belong in the East Indian
room, too. The south door is open.”
When he had gone, she stood shaking for a moment, listening to
his footsteps die away, and then she flew to the gate, searching
the twilight desperately with straining eyes. There was no one
there--no one at all--but then the turn in the lane would have
hidden him by now. And suddenly terror fell from her like a cloak.
She turned swiftly to the brick wall, straining up, up on tiptoes,
to lay her cheek against its roughened surface, to touch it very
gently with her lips. She could hear Robin whistling down the
path, but she did not turn. She was bidding farewell to Green
Gardens--and the last adventurer.
DELILAH
“But what is she like?” asked O’Hara impatiently. “Man alive,
you’ve seen her, haven’t you? Sat next to her at dinner at the
Embassy last night, didn’t you? Well, then, for the love of the
Saints, what’s the creature like?”
De Nemours shrugged his shoulders, raising whimsical eyebrows at
the slim young giant towering above him.
“_Mon cher_, one cannot put the lady into two words. Voyons--she
is, as our Alfred so charmingly puts it, blonde like the wheat----”
“Oh, rot.” The ardent voice of the British representative was curt
to the point of rudeness, and De Nemour’s smile became exquisitely
courteous. “I don’t care whether she’s an albino. She’s the
American representative on this committee, and I’m interested in
her mental qualifications. Is she intelligent?”
“Intelligent! Ah, my poor friend, she is far, far worse.” His smile
grew reminiscent as he lit his cigarette. “She has a wit like a
shining sword, and eyelashes of a truly fantastic length.”
“And every time her eyes shine you think it’s the sword,” commented
O’Hara bitterly. “God, this is hideous! I can see her sitting there
chattering epigrams and fluttering dimples----”
“You do Mrs. Lindsay an injustice,” said another voice quietly, and
O’Hara swung around with a slight start.
“Oh, Celati, I clean forgot that you were there. I thought that you
had never met the lady.”
“Unfortunately for me, you are entirely correct. But last night
I came in after the dinner for some bridge, and I watched Mrs.
Lindsay with great interest, with great admiration, for more than
half an hour. There was a most fat Senator from the South talking
to her, and she was listening. I say _listening_, mark. In this
great country the most charming of women feel that they have
already acquired all desirable information and wisdom and that it
is their not unpainful function to disseminate it. I find that it
makes intercourse more exciting than flattering. But Mrs. Lindsay
was--listening.”
“You mean to say that she said nothing at all in half an hour?”
O’Hara’s tone was flatly incredulous.
“Oh, _si, si_, she spoke three times--and if one may judge by the
human countenance, I dare to wager that that most fat Senator
thought that never woman spoke more wittily or wisely.”
“And we are to have the jewels?”
“But surely. She said after the first ten minutes, ‘Oh, but do go
on!’ and after the next, ‘But what happened then?’ and after the
third ‘Good-night--and thank you.’ May I have a light, De Nemours?
Thanks!”
“And those--those are the epigrams?” O’Hara threw back his head and
laughed--a sudden boyish shout, oddly at variance with his stern
young face.
“Ah,” murmured Celati, a reminiscent and enigmatic smile touching
his lips, “you should have heard her voice!”
O’Hara’s smile vanished abruptly. He came perilously near scowling
as he stood staring down at the inscrutable Latin countenances
blandly presented for inspection. De Nemours permitted a flicker of
genial appreciation to warm his cold eyes, the tribute of a highly
distinguished connoisseur. Truly, this young Irishman, he was of
a magnificence. No collector of beauty in all its forms could
remain unmoved by the sight of that superb head--that more than
superb body. Praxiteles Hermes turned gypsy! One of those Celts
with obviously Spanish blood running hot and cold through their
veins. The cool appraisal hovered for the moment on the verge of
interest--flickered out. De Nemours was quite definitely convinced
that not one man in a thousand was deserving of interest, and he
had found little in an extremely varied experience to shake his
conclusions.
“An exquisite voice,” he agreed pleasantly. “It will turn our
dullest statistics to madrigals. The gods are merciful.”
O’Hara swung his chair to the table, protest bitter in his stormy
gray eyes and on his quick tongue. These damned foreigners!