crosses her path--it isn’t in her to hurt a fly, and she must have
been gracious to that wretched boy until he made it impossible.
But here is Monsieur De Nemours and the lady herself! Let’s go
into the next room, shall we? Lilah, you lovely wonder, you look
sixteen--and young for your age, at that. Let’s see, the Havilands
aren’t here yet, and Bob Hyde telephoned that he and Sylvia would
be late----”
O’Hara followed the swift, bird-like voice into the next room. By
and by it would stop and he and Lilah would have to find words to
fill the silence. What words should he choose? He was too tired to
be careful--too tired to think; what devilish Fate was thrusting
him into a position where he must do both?
She was talking to De Nemours, the shining head tilted back a
little, the hushed music of her voice drifting across the room
to him like a little breeze. She had on a black frock, slim and
straight--not a jewel, not a flower, but all of spring laughed and
danced and sang and sparkled in that upturned face. O’Hara’s hand
closed sharply on the back of the chair. What if he were wrong--if
this were all some ugly trick that his worn-out nerves were
playing? After all, Lucia Dane had known her for years, and women’s
friendships were notoriously exacting. What did he know of her save
that she was lovely? Ah, lovely, lovely to heartbreak, as she stood
there laughing up at De Nemours--at once still and sparkling, in
that magical way of hers, like sunshine dancing on a quiet pool.
Was it some devil in him that made him suspect the angel in her?
Sometimes he thought that he must be going mad.
He had been so sure of himself; no woman was to touch his life
until he had moulded it into its appointed shape--and then he would
find a clear-eyed comrade who would be proud and humble in his
glory--some girl, wise and tender and simple, who would always be
waiting, quiet-eyed and quiet-hearted when he turned his tired
steps to home--someone in whose kind arms he would find peace and
rest and quiet. For he would be Man, the conqueror, and he would
have deep need of these. So he had decreed, during the hard years
that brought him to this place where, if he stretched only a little
higher, he could touch the shining dreams--and behold, a door
had opened and closed, and a yellow-haired girl had come in--and
his ordered world was chaos and madness. He knew, with a sense
of profoundly rebellious despair, that he was out of hand; his
nerves had him, and they were riding him unmercifully, revenging
themselves richly for all the days and nights that he had crushed
them down and scorned them and ignored them. They had him now, this
arrogant young dreamer, out to save a world--they had him now, for
all his dreams!
“Mr. O’Hara, aren’t you taking me in to dinner?”
He started as violently as though she had touched his bare heart
with those soft fingers of hers.
“You were a thousand miles away,” said the fairy voice, and the
hand rested lightly on his arm. “I hate to bring you back, but
they’re all going in, you see. Was it a pleasant country that you
were playing in?”
“Pleasant enough,” he told her hardly. “But it’s poor sport looking
down on a lost inheritance from the edge of a precipice. Did I seem
to be enjoying it?”
“You looked as most of us feel on the edge of a precipice, I
suppose--a little terrified, and a good deal thrilled. Was the lost
heritage a pretty place?”
“As pretty as most lost places,” said O’Hara.
Lilah Lindsay leaned toward him, pushing the flowers between them a
little aside.
“But why not turn your back on it?” she asked, her eyes laughing
into his, friendly and adventurous. “You might climb higher up the
mountain, and find some spot so strange and beautiful that it will
make the little garden in the valley seem a dull spot well lost.”
“I have already turned my back,” he said.
“I think that I am glad,” said Lilah Lindsay. “You see, you do not
belong in the valley. Will you tell me something, Mr. O’Hara?”
“What is there that I can tell you?”
“Oh, many things. I’m not wisdom incarnate, I know, but I have
enough wits to realize that stupidity has you fast in his clutch if
he can once get you to stop asking questions. I shall go down to my
grave with ‘Why?’ still on my lips, I promise you!”
“Aren’t you afraid of exhausting our wretched little hoard of
information?”
He felt as though some gigantic hand had released its grasp about
his heart. If she would only keep the laughter dancing through her
lashes he was safe.
“No, no; it’s inexhaustible, if properly handled.” Her voice was
dancing, too. “I came across an old formula once; it’s served
me well many and many a time, when I’ve seen a resentful and
suspicious look in some man’s eyes that says, ‘Young woman, you are
leading me to believe that you know more than I do. Young woman,
you are boring me.’ I can drive that look from any man’s eyes in
the world!”
“With what alchemy, little magician?”
She leaned closer again, and suddenly he smelt the violets--the
room was full of them--the world itself was full of them!
“Why, I ask him to spell a word; any nice, simple word like ‘cat’
or ‘dog,’ so that he will be sure to be able to spell it, poor
dear! And in thirty seconds the sky is blue, and the birds are
singing, and God’s in his heaven and woman in her proper place.
It’s white magic, truly!”
“Truly,” O’Hara laughed back at her, “and truly, and truly, I’m
believing you.” He felt light-headed with happiness--oh, surely,
this was clear candour that she was giving him; all this lovely
nonsense was cool water to his fever. Lucia Dane was right--the
rest was ugly madness. “But what was the nice simple word that you
were going to ask me to spell?”
“It’s rather a long and difficult word, I’m afraid,” she said
gravely. “I was going to ask how you, an Irishman, came to be the
British Representative in our Council?”
For a minute all the old, sick suspicion clouded the gray laughter
of his eyes--his face grew hard and still--then the unswerving
candour of the eyes lifted to his smote him to the heart, and he
smiled down reassuringly.
“I suppose that it does seem damned queer. But you see, I happen to
be British first and Irish second. Does that seem impossible?”
“No,” she replied slowly, “but it’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. It’s infernally lonely work, I can tell you. You
see, I was born and bred in Dublin; all my family think I’m a black
traitor. They’re hot against England, and hot against me. They
won’t believe that Ireland is my heart’s heart. But England--oh,
she’s the power and the glory--she can lift the Irish high and safe
out of their despair, though it’s blind from weeping the poor souls
are--they’ll never be seeing it.”
The Irish in him was burning in his eyes and on his tongue--she
stirred and nodded.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I suppose that our Southern men who
fought for the Union met with just such hatred and misunderstanding.
And yet they were the ones who loved her best, the proud and lovely
South--they who were willing to bear her hatred that they might save
her soul.”
“Oh, it’s the wonder you are for understanding!” His heart was
shaking his voice, but the callous and greatly bored gentleman on
the other side of Mrs. Lindsay suddenly raised an energetic protest.
“See here, Lovely Lady, are you going to leave me to commune with
my soul for the rest of the evening? For the last ten minutes I’ve
been trying----”
O’Hara turned to the impatient young woman on his left, the ardour
still lingering in his face. It lingered so convincingly that he
proceeded to thrill her clear through to her small bones; she
spent the next few days in a state of dreamy preoccupation that
fairly distracted her adoring husband, and continued to cherish
indefinitely the conviction that she had inspired a devastating if
hopeless passion. It was lucky for her that she never knew that all
that pulled O’Hara through the next ten minutes was a strong effort
of the imagination, by which he substituted a head of palest gold
for the curly brown one and a voice of silver magic for some rather
shrill chatter. And then, suddenly, it was in blessed truth the
silver voice.
“You see, I was specially interested in your feeling for Ireland
because of the situation touched on in your record. That’s serious,
isn’t it?”
“Serious to desperation.”
“But a great deal of it’s just surmise on your part, I suppose?”
“Surmise?” His voice was suddenly weary. “No, no, it’s the rotten
truth. All the facts are there, even the names of the leaders in
the plot.”
“But how can you be so sure?”
“I can be sure.” There was a grim certainty in his tone that left
little room for doubt.
“You use spies?”
“Spies? You might call them that. There are three ring-leaders in
the conspiracy; the youngest was my room-mate in college.”
“I see.” After a moment in which she sat quite still, clear-eyed
and pensive, she asked, “Now that you have all the details of the
plot, why don’t you crush it?”
“To do anything now would precipitate the bloodiest kind of civil
war again. We must move with the greatest care; God help Ireland if
wind of it reaches the other party. They’re straining at the leash
like mad dogs already.”
“England must have great faith in your discretion,” said Lilah
Lindsay, and O’Hara’s face suddenly flamed like the Crusader’s of
old.
“God grant it’s not misplaced,” he said simply. “It’s sleepless
I’ve gone these many nights looking for a way out--and now I think
we’ve found one that’s neither too hard nor too weak. It’s been
weary work hunting it. You see it’s not only Ireland we must help;
it’s all the little, unhappy countries lost in the dark, and like
to kill themselves before they find the light. Sometimes it breaks
the heart in your body to watch them.” His eyes were sombre with
all the useless pain in the world.
“Then don’t let’s watch them for a little while,” she said gently.
“I should think shame on myself for making you talk shop this way;
I do, I do! But it’s hard to shake it off, isn’t it?”
“Not when you smile like that.”
Lilah Lindsay smiled like that again.
“Now and then,” she murmured, “you are just about six years old.”
“Why did you cut off your hair?” demanded O’Hara, and his voice was
a trifle unsteady.
“Why?” She brushed it back with light fingers, gay as a child once
more. “Oh, it used to take me hours to wind it about my head and
coil it over my ears; it was way below my waist, you know, and I
found it very distracting, to me and--other people. Don’t you like
it this way?”
“Below your waist,” he said. “Oh, then you must be a real Fairy
Princess, all shining white and gold.”
“But don’t you like it this way?” asked Delilah.
“It’s beautiful,” said O’Hara. “But in every foolish heart of us
there’s a lady in a tower to whom we call ‘Rappunzel, Rappunzel,
let down your hair’--waiting to go climbing up the shining locks to
her heart--and Paradise.”
Delilah rested her chin on linked fingers, her eyes at once dancing
and demure. “How lamentably old-fashioned you are for all your
radicalism. Shall I let my hair grow?”
“It’s the wonder it must be,” he whispered. “Breaking and foaming
below your waist.”
“I’ve always thought of it, somehow, as a--a symbol,” she said, her
eyes fixed on the coffee that she was slowly stirring. “When I cut
it off, I said to each shining length, ‘There you go, Folly--and
you, Frailty--and you, Weakness----’”
“And did you never think that your namesake must have cried of old
to other shining locks ‘There you go, Strength?’”
The new Delilah looked suddenly enchantingly mischievous. “Well,
but that was not her own hair! It belonged to a mere man who chose
a very vulnerable spot to keep his strength. You have learned
wisdom since Samson.”
“I wonder!” said O’Hara.
“I’ll remember what you have told me,” she laughed up at him.
“You seem to hold that woman’s strength, too, is in her hair.
Perhaps--perhaps you are right, after all. Will you come to see me
one of these days, and try to convert me?”
They were all standing; he rose, too, his eyes holding her.
“When may I come--to-morrow?”
She smiled back at his swift urgency--then bent the primrose head
in assent. O’Hara held back the curtains for her to pass through.
“To-morrow,” he told her, his eyes still lit with that incredulous
wonder. “To-morrow is a great way off!”
III
“I’ll just wait here,” he said to the pretty maid. “I’m not dressed
for a party. You might tell Mrs. Lindsay that--that when she’s not
too busy, I’d like awfully to speak to her for a minute.”
“Very well, Mr. O’Hara.” Her voice had all the impersonal blankness
of the well-trained servant, but once on the dark stairs she shook
her glossy head dismally. She had come to know him well in the
past weeks.
“The Saints preserve the poor man, it’s fit for a long rest in a
pine box he’s looking, and that’s no lie at all! And it’s my fine
lady upstairs that is after painting shadows black as the pit under
his poor eyes, or my name’s not Bridget O’Neill. It’s a wicked
world entirely, and that’s what it is!”
O’Hara stood watching the door through which she had vanished.
In a minute--in five minutes--in ten minutes--someone else might
stand framed in that door; he could not tear his eyes from it, but
stood staring, hands thrust deep into his pockets, very quiet, with
fever playing behind the tense stillness of his face. The painted
clock on the mantel chimed the hour out twelve times, each stroke
a mocking peal of laughter. His shoulders sagged abruptly and he
turned from the door. What was the use?--she wasn’t coming. She
would never come again.
He crossed to the mantel slowly, noting all the studied grace
with desperate tenderness. To whom could it belong but Lilah, the
little room that he loved, demure and gay--intimate as a boudoir,
formal as a study? Those slim hands of hers must have placed the
bright flowers in the low bowls of powdered Venetian glass, and
lined the bookcases with deep-coloured books, set the small bright
fire burning with pine cones, and lighted the waxen candles that
were casting their gracious light all about him. The satin-wood
desk looked austere enough, with its orderly stacks of paper, its
trays of sharpened pencils and shining pens--but the lace pillow
in the deep chair by the fire was a little crumpled, there was a
half-burnt cigarette in the enamelled tray, and trailing its rosy
grace shamelessly across a sombre cushion was a bit of chiffon and
ribbon, the needle still sticking in it. It could not have been
so long ago that she had been here; all the dainty disorder spoke
eloquently of her still.
Oh, thrice-accursed fool that he had been to risk even for a second
the happiness that for weeks had been fluttering closer to him--the
happiness that only a day before had almost closed its shining
wings about him! They had been looking at some of her old snapshots
of a motor trip through Ireland, laughing together in the enchanted
intimacy which they had acquired over the begoggled, be-veiled, and
beswaddled small creature that she assured him was her exquisite
self--and then she had come upon a snapshot that was only too
obviously not Ireland. It was of a vine-hung terrace, with the
sea stretching far out in the distance, and the sunlight dappling
through onto the upturned face of a man--quite a young man, in
white flannels, swinging a careless tennis racquet and laughing in
the sun. For a minute her sure fingers had faltered; there, very
deliberately, she had picked it up, tearing it into small pieces,
dropping them deftly into the dancing fire.
“Here’s one of us having tea by the road,” she had continued
evenly, but O’Hara had not even heard her. His mind was far away,
sick with apprehension and suspicion, all the old dim terrors
suddenly rampant.
“Lilah--it’s unspeakable of me to worry you with this--but I can’t
get it out of my mind somehow. Will you tell me--will you tell
me if they ever found out who sent that anonymous letter to your
husband?”
She had stared back at him with strange eyes set in a face from
which every trace of emotion had suddenly been frozen.
“The letter? No.” The small remote voice was utterly forbidding.
“You are quite right; it is cruel to remind of those times. What
difference can it possibly make to you?”
He had fought desperately to find some words that would show her
what need his sick soul had of assurance, but he had found none. He
could only stare at her dumbly, his wretched eyes assuring that it
made, somehow, a huge difference.
“But why?”
And he had cried hopelessly, “Oh, I may be mad--I think I am--but I
can’t get it out of my head. I keep wondering whether you--if you
sent----”
“I?” She had cried out as sharply as though he had struck her,
and then sat very still, fighting her way back to composure, inch
by inch. When she spoke again her voice was very low, incredibly
controlled.
“You are implying something that is too monstrous for sanity. May
I ask what motive--what possible motive, however abominable--you
think that I could have had for wrecking my husband’s career?”
He had whispered, “Oh, God forgive me, what motive had Antony’s
Egypt? What motive have any of you for flaunting your power over
us? You crack the whip, and we go crashing through the hoop of our
dreams, smashing it--smashing it for ever.”
She had risen then, sweeping him from brow to heel with her
unrelenting eyes.
“How you know us!” His heart had sickened under that terrible small
laugh, cold as frozen water. And she had turned to the door, her
head high. “If you can think such things of me--if you can even
dream them--your presence here is simply an insult to us both. I
must ask you to leave. And unless you realize the grotesque madness
of your accusation, I must ask you not to come here again. That
releases you from dinner to-morrow night, naturally. I don’t think
that there is anything more to be said.”
No, there had been nothing more to be said--nothing. He could
not remember how he had got himself out of the house--he could
not remember anything save a dull nightmare of vacillation and
despair, that had finally driven him back to the little room,
whipped and beaten, ready to capitulate on any terms--ready for
any life that would buy him a moment’s happiness. And now--now
she would not come, even to accept his surrender. He turned
from the mantel violently, and felt his heart contract in swift
panic. A man was watching him intently from the other end of the
room--a man with a hateful, twisted face--he caught his breath in
a shaken laugh. Those damned nerves of his would wreck him yet!
It was only his reflection in the cloudy Venetian mirror; the
firelight and candlelight played strange tricks with it, shadowing
it grotesquely--still, even looked at closely, it was nothing to
boast of. He stood contemplating it grimly with its tortured mouth
and haunted eyes--and then suddenly the air was full of violets.
He turned slowly, a strange peace holding his tired heart. She had
come to him; nothing else would ever matter again.
She was standing in the doorway, a little cloud of palest gray.
It was the first time that he had seen her in light colours, and
she had done something to her hair--caught it up with a great
sparkling comb--it shone like pale fire. Her arms were quite full
of violets--the largest ones that he had ever seen, like purple
pansies. He stood drinking her in with his tired eyes, not even
looking for words. It was she who spoke.
“Bridget told me that you were here. I thought that you were not
coming to-night.”
He shook his head, with a torn and lamentable smile. “You
said--until I realized my madness. Believe me--believe me, I have
realized it, Lilah.”
She came slowly into the room, but the nearer she came to him the
farther she seemed away, secure in her ethereal loveliness, her
velvet eyes turned to ice.
“You have realized it, I am afraid, too late. There are still two
tables of bridge upstairs; I have only a few minutes to give you.
Was there anything that you wished to say?”
He shook his head dumbly, and she sank into the great chair,
stifling a small yawn perfunctorily.
“Oh, I’m deathly tired. It’s been a hideous evening, from beginning
to end. Come, amuse me, good tragedian, make me laugh just once,
and I may forgive you. I may forgive you, even though you do not
desire it.” Again that fleeting smile, exquisite and terrible.
But O’Hara was on his knees beside her.
“Delilah, don’t laugh, don’t laugh--I’m telling you the laughter is
dead in me. I’d rather see you weeping for the poor, blind fool who
lost the key to Paradise.”
“Who threw it away,” she amended, touching the violets with light
fingers. “But never forget, it’s better not to have set your foot
within its gates than to be exiled from it. Never forget that, my
tragedian.”
He raised his head, haggard and alert. “Lilah, what do you mean?”
“Why, nothing--only Lucia Dane was here for dinner and she thought
it--strange--that you and I should be the gossip of Washington
these days. When she had finished with what you had said to her, I
thought it strange, too. And I assured her that there would be no
more cause for gossip.”
“I was mad when I talked to that little fool,” he told her
fiercely. “Clean out of my head trying to fight off your magic.
That was the first night--the first night that I owned to myself
that I loved you.”
“Your madness seems to be recurrent,” she murmured. “You should
take measures against it.”
“I have taken measures. It shall never touch you again. I know now
that it has simply been an obsession--a hallucination--anything in
Heaven or Hell that you want to call it. You have all my trust, all
my faith.”
“It is a terrible thing not to trust a woman,” she said. “More
terrible than you know. Sometimes it makes her unworthy of trust.”
“Not you,” he whispered. “Never.”
“We’re delicate machinery, tragedian. Touch a hidden spring in us
with your clumsy fingers and the little thing that was ticking
away as faithfully and peacefully as an alarm-clock stops for a
minute--and then goes on ticking. Only it has turned to an infernal
machine--and it will destroy you.”
She was silent for a moment, her fingers resting lightly on that
bowed head. When she spoke again her voice was gentle. “Last night,
after you had gone, I remembered what you had said about Antony
and his Egypt, and I found the play. Parts of it still go singing
through my head. They loved each other so, those two magnificent
fools. He finds her treacherous a hundred times, and each time
forgives her, and loves her again--and she repays him beyond
belief--far, far beyond power and treachery and death. Do you
remember his cry in that first hour of his disaster?
“‘O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?’
“And when she weeps for pardon, how he tells her
“‘Fall not a tear, I say: one of them rates
All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss,
Even this repays me.’
“Though she has ruined him utterly--though he sees it and cries
aloud
“‘O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,--
Whose eye becked forth my wars, and called them home,
Like a right gipsy hath at false and loose
Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.’
“Still, still his last thought is to reach her arms.
‘I am dying, Egypt, dying, only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.’”
“Why, he was well repaid,” said that strange, humble voice.
“I am glad that you feel that,” Delilah told him, and she rose
swiftly. “Would you like to kiss me? You see, I have ruined you.”
O’Hara stumbled to his feet.
“What are you saying?” he whispered, a dreadful incredulity driving
the words through his stiffened lips.
“That I have ruined you. I have sent your notes on the Irish
situation to the other party.”
“You are mad.”
“No, no.” She shook her head reassuringly. “Quite sane. I didn’t
address them in my own handwriting, naturally. The envelope is
typewritten, but the notes are in long-hand; yours. The English
Government will be forced to believe that for once it has misplaced
its trust--but Ireland should pay you well--if she lives through
civil war.”
“By God----” His voice failed him for a moment. “This is some
filthy dream.”