MACDALY’S LECTURE
Various apocryphal stories are told of Brian Camperdown’s doings on the
night that Stargarde Turner promised to be his wife. It is said that his
blood being in too much of a tumult to allow him to enter his house and
go to sleep, he started on a joyful and eccentric pilgrimage around the
peninsula on which the city of Halifax is built.
Not satisfied with tramping over the dark and muddy roads of the Park,
and the quiet streets of the city, he is said to have proceeded along
the shores of Bedford Basin, and on the spot where more than a hundred
years ago dead French soldiers, unhappy members of the expedition of
1746, were discovered sitting under the trees, their useless muskets by
their sides—he, by a fitful gleam of moonlight, carved his own and
Stargarde’s initials on the smooth-coated bark of a maple.
A story also exists of his having been seen eight miles farther on, and
of his startling a watcher by a sick-bed by a glimpse of his ecstatic
face looking through the cottage window; but this one is uncertain, and
has never been corroborated.
Certain it is, however, that at daylight he returned home neither
footsore nor weary and still in his state of exaltation. He let himself
in by means of a latch-key, made an elaborate and prolonged toilet, then
restlessly haunted the lower rooms of the house, waiting for some one to
wake up to whom he could impart his joyful intelligence.
Old Hannah was the first person to come downstairs. To her, blear-eyed
and affectionate, he, with an agonized twisting of lips, in order that
he might not shout his news to the entire household, announced the fact
that he was shortly to be married.
His ancient nurse staggered back as if she had received a blow, and fell
in a rickety heap of bones on the hall floor. He lifted her up,
administered restoratives, and presently had the mortification of seeing
her burst into tears and stumble down to the basement.
“And she professes to adore Stargarde,” he muttered, backing in
discomfiture into the dining room to avoid the two smart maids, who were
tripping down the staircase in snowy caps and aprons.
Warned by his experience with Hannah, he said nothing to Mrs. Trotley
and Zilla beyond a polite “Good-morning,” till they were well on with
their breakfast. Then, with a diminished spirit, he cautiously informed
them of the approaching change in his condition.
Zilla had been talking volubly, but at his words she snapped off a
sentence on her lips, let fall her porridge spoon, and gave him a look
that made him quail.
Mrs. Trotley was more to be pitied than Zilla. At the close of a long
and unhappy life the lines had fallen to her in pleasant places, and
these pleasant places she naturally supposed she must forsake should her
patron marry. Yet she had command enough over herself to endeavor to
hide her feelings. Camperdown’s keen eyes, however, pierced through her
disguise, and even while she was uttering her congratulations to him,
and wishing that Stargarde might enjoy every happiness, he saw the two
salt tears come rolling slowly down her cheeks.
She knew that he saw them, and was overcome by confusion. “We have been
very happy together,” she murmured apologetically.
Zilla made no pretense at self-control. Pushing herself violently away
from the table she ran upstairs, where Camperdown knew she would cry
till she made herself ill.
“What a monster I am!” he soliloquized, excusing himself from the table
and hastily making his way out of the house. “Only the author of all
these troubles can heal them.”
He walked rapidly toward the Pavilion, stopping once on his way there to
order a gift of fruit and flowers to be sent immediately to Mrs. Trotley
and Zilla.
Stargarde was at breakfast, and laying a bunch of roses, flowers that
she passionately loved, beside her, he drew up a chair and with a dismal
face begged for a cup of chocolate.
“I have to give you up,” he said, swallowing the scalding liquor with
alarming taste and rolling his twinkling eyes at her.
“Have you?” tranquilly.
“Yes; my family doesn’t approve,” and he related his domestic troubles
to her.
“Dear things, how they love you!” and she gazed caressingly at him.
“I wonder what would make me give you up?” he muttered.
“I will go and see Mrs. Trotley and Zilla and poor old Hannah,” she said
thoughtfully.
“You don’t wish them to leave my house, do you?”
“Oh, no, no; I am accustomed to a large family. We shall all live
happily together.”
“Are you ever going to stop eating bread and butter?” he asked
impatiently. “That is your fifth slice.”
“Why should I?” with a mischievous dimple showing itself in her cheek.
“This is malice aforethought,” he said firmly, sitting down beside her,
and withdrawing a morsel of bread from her hands. “Now,” holding her
wrists, “give me a kiss, sweet, passionate soul in a passionless body.”
“Don’t speak in that way,” she said, kissing him. “It sounds as if I had
no feeling.”
“Well, you haven’t. You say ‘dear Brian,’” mimicking her, “and then it
is ‘dear granny,’ and ‘dear Bobby,’ and ‘dear everybody.’”
She laughed merrily. “Would you have me striding to and fro and glaring
at you, and looking daggers over my shoulder as you do?”
“No; but you might be a little more demonstrative. Women don’t know how
to love. You’re nothing but a proper old maid. The time was when I would
have cut my throat for a kiss. Lord, what agony!”
She looked at him sweetly, and as he would not release her hands gently
laid her cheek against his face.
“You are a beauty and I am a beast,” he said abruptly; “aren’t you
afraid of me?”
“Why should I be afraid of you, Brian? You don’t love me for what you
are pleased to call my beauty, nor do I love you for what you are
pleased to call your lack of it. There is something beyond that.”
“Yes, yes, my angel; I do thank the Lord that I have found one woman
that can look into my soul.”
“In sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, in life and
in death we are for each other now,” she said. “How lovingly you would
cherish me were I suddenly to become old and ugly and unattractive.
Brian, last night at the three-mile house when you looked up at me at
the table——”
“Yes, darling.”
“I had been thinking about your patient; then the thought suddenly came
to me, ‘Suppose this man too, should become ill—should die?’ My heart
seemed to stand still. I thought I should suffocate. Oh, Brian, take
good care of yourself. I fear that I could not say, ‘the Lord’s will be
done,’ if anything should happen to you,” and burying her face in his
shoulder she began sobbing violently.
“Come now, this is idolatry,” he said, looking down at her with a
radiant face; “rank idolatry, and you will be punished for it according
to your own pleasant theory. I wanted you to be demonstrative,
sweetheart; but not along this line. When will you marry me?”
“Whenever you think best, Brian. I have given up worrying about this
place. The Lord will provide some other person to take care of the
people. We are none of us indispensable to him.”
“No,” he said gravely. “When will you marry me?”
“In three months, Brian.”
“In six weeks, beauty; and when shall I see you again?”
“To-morrow afternoon.”
“This evening, my charmer.”
“Brian,” she said, clinging lovingly to his arm, “I suppose nothing
would induce you to live in the Pavilion.”
He made a wry face. “I’ll come if my wife refuses to live in any other
place.”
“Your wife will do as you wish,” said Stargarde.
“You sweet creature, and blessed man that I am!” and with a final
embrace he left her.
Stargarde spent as usual a busy day, and at six o’clock sat down to a
brief and lively repast that Vivienne and Judy came in to share with
her. After the tea things had been put away, she invited them to go with
her to a large room used for general assembly purposes by the tenants of
the Pavilion and called the kitchen.
The two girls gladly accompanied her, for the cheering and consoling of
the different members of Stargarde’s enormous family had become their
chief occupation. They walked along to the large apartment, glancing
across as they did so to the bathroom, washhouses, and co-operative
baking establishment, in the courtyard, with the working of which they
had become quite familiar.
“Isn’t this jolly!” exclaimed Judy when the kitchen door was pushed
open.
At one side of the extensive and irregularly shaped room, heaped-up logs
blazed in a vast cavern of a fireplace. No other light was needed. The
floor was a painted one, and the furniture consisted of a number of
plain wooden rocking-chairs for children and grown people, a few small
tables, and a piano situated in a dusky corner.
At this piano a red-coated soldier was seated, singing amorously, “I’m
so ’appy; so terrible ’appy,” to a maiden hovering sentimentally over
him. Some children sprawling on the floor were tossing jackstones, and
two gray-haired men at a table were intent on draughts.
An old woman, known as “granny,” sat knitting by the fire. There was
alway a granny in the Pavilion, for when one died Stargarde immediately
got another, saying that the spectacle of an aged person among young
ones, beloved and waited on by all, was one of the most humanizing
experiments she had ever tried.
She gave a kind “good-evening” to the people in the room and then
approached the old woman. “How are you, dear granny?”
The venerable knitter was in a bad frame of mind, and at first would
vouchsafe no answer, but pretended to be greatly occupied with picking
up a dropped stitch. In response to another appeal she said irritably
that she was “cruel poorly,” and there was “death in the wind.”
“Draw the curtain behind granny,” said Stargarde, motioning one of the
children to a window. “She doesn’t feel well. What can we do to cheer
her?”
“Make some sweet stuff,” said Judy, who was philosophically inspecting
the drawn and crabbed face. “That will tickle her palate—and her vanity
too," in a lower key.
“Happy thought!” said Stargarde. “Dick and Mary, will you go to my rooms
and get a saucepan?”
Ten minutes later a pot of candy simmered on the coals sending out a
fragrant cloud of steam that the old woman sniffed appreciatively.
Soon other people began to come in—more soldiers and more girls, happy
in the knowledge that they might carry on legitimate love-making in
shadowy corners under Stargarde’s vigilant but sympathetic eye.
The boys of the Pavilion took turns at doorkeeping, for the kitchen was
kept open at all hours. This evening a small red-eyed lad officiated,
and to his shrill remarks Vivienne and Judy listened in concealed
amusement.
“You can’t come in,” he said abruptly to a lad of his own size who was
shouldering his way past him.
“Why not?” fiercely; “you ain’t Miss Turner.”
“I’m her doorkeeper, and she’ll not have you.”
“Why not?”
“Cause you’re dirty.”
“Yer lie.”
“Can’t I smell?” said the other indignantly. “If you don’t go and take a
warm bath, which you can have for nuthin’,” pointing to the courtyard,
“you can’t come in here. Now get.”
“I sha’n’t; I’m comin’ in.”
The doorkeeper stood his ground. “You don’t need fine duds to come
here,” he said eloquently; “Miss Turner’ll stand rags or anythin’, but
you’ve got to be clean. She hates dirt.”
The boy silently withdrew, but presently came back his face shining with
a cleanliness that was evidently unusual and painful to him.
Just as the door closed behind him Dr. Camperdown and Mr. Armour
entered, both irresistibly drawn thither by the presence of the women
they loved.
Camperdown stepped in boldly and confidently. He was a frequent visitor
to the place. Armour came in more quietly and looked about him with some
curiosity.
It was an interesting scene. The flames of the enormous fire brightly
illumined the faces and figures of Stargarde, Vivienne, Judy, granny,
and the children, who were in the foreground, and the groups at the
various tables in the middle of the room. The retiring few who had
withdrawn to the window seats and corner benches were not so plainly to
be observed.
All were on an equality. There was no sharp drawing of class lines
possible in Stargarde’s vicinity, and every face in the room was for the
time a contented face.
Armour and Camperdown sat down near Stargarde and looked about them
while listening to the overpowering strains of a melancholy swan song
that came sobbing and crying from the fiddle of a blind man who sat in a
corner of the room.
A club-footed boy, hitching himself over the shining floor, occasionally
stirred the molasses in the pot on the stove, and after a time, to the
great delight of the children, poured it out in a number of shallow
buttered plates and took it out to the veranda to cool.
Shortly after the exit of the taffy plates, the doorkeeper, who was a
lad not deficient in a sense of humor, caught sight of a new guest, and
with an exaggerated flourish announced in his shrillest tones, “Lord
Skitanglebags!”
MacDaly stepped gallantly forward, smirking and bowing to the assembled
company and taking in good part their subdued laughter and humorous
salutations.
He had arrayed himself in white stockings and tan shoes, a faded red
military jacket, a parti-colored sash and a pair of shiny black
trousers. In one hand he carried a sword, and in the other a black silk
hat. This hat he adroitly turned upside down, thereby allowing to fall
upon the floor in front of Stargarde a small roll of manuscript.
“MacDaly,” she exclaimed, surveying in amusement his beaming face and
the gray locks brushed smoothly upon each side of his gleaming bald
pate, “You don’t mean to say that you wish to give us another lecture?”
“A topical lecture, lady,” meekly.
“It is better to be frank, isn’t it?” she continued.
“Yes, lady; oh, yes. Frankness is the privilege of great minds.”
“Your last lecture was too long,” she said. “Two mortal hours we had to
sit here and listen to you. It wasn’t fair, MacDaly, for we are all
tired people and come to the kitchen for relaxation. We don’t want a
formal programme, and though it is very interesting to hear about
Napoleon and St. Helena, you shouldn’t entrap us into listening to you
when our minds aren’t in a receptive condition.”
“True, lady, true, most unfortunately true; but yet,” depositing his
tall hat and his sword on the table, and tentatively unfolding his
manuscript with a roguish gleam in the tail of his eye, “yet if I might
be graciously vouchsafed just one humble corner wherein to amble away in
figures of speech those listening who felt in that manner disposed,
those not attending who felt in any way so inclined, I might, could,
would, and should——”
“Go on, man,” said Camperdown with an imperious gesture, “and don’t bore
people to death.”
MacDaly blinked maliciously at him, stationed himself against the wall
at a short distance from the fire, and drawing a reading desk toward him
placed his manuscript on it.
“Does the time serve my presumption?” he asked presently, peering about
the room through a pair of spectacles.
No one heard him. The soldiers were playing games at the tables with
their sweethearts, and the other men and women were engaged in
conversation. Stargarde, Vivienne, and Dr. Camperdown were talking to a
sad-faced girl who had just come in; Judy had slipped to a cushion on
the floor and was being initiated into the mysteries of jackstones; and
Mr. Armour was absently stroking his mustache and looking into the fire.
Nothing daunted MacDaly cleared his throat and began, “Be it known to
all men that somebody said something about Lady Stargarde Turner and her
systematic family——”
“Hear him,” said Dr. Camperdown; “he’s talking about you, Miss Turner.”
“MacDaly,” called Stargarde in her clear sweet voice, “you mustn’t be
personal.”
“Oh, no, lady, no, not for worlds.”
“It is better not to mention names,” she went on.
“To hear is to obey, lady, as the Turks say when their wives talk to
them. We’ll conclude that the subject of this brief discourse is a
person called Nameless, otherwise Bombo Elephanto.”
“Very well,” she replied turning back to the girl.
MacDaly, sighing heavily, ran his finger down his manuscript, obliged by
Stargarde’s dictum to skip a paragraph of proper names. “Well, time
rolled on,” he said at last, “and as it is customary in the finishing-up
dance, be it as it may, war dance or otherwise, some one has to pay the
piper, this great Mohawk or Mogul as I may call him, Bombo Elephanto,
ferociously sets to work teeth and toenails to kill a crow for himself.”
“What under the sun is he at?” growled Camperdown.
“Hush,” whispered Stargarde; “I fear he is on the subject of Colonel
Armour. MacDaly has a grudge against him because he sneers at this
establishment of the Pavilion, and this is the way he has of settling
it. If he is too explicit I shall have to stop him.”
“Bombo Elephanto,” resumed MacDaly, “being aroused into some of the
mental affections to which he is recently subject, professionally
entitled to be periodical hemidemicrania——”
“H’m; this sounds interesting,” muttered Camperdown.
MacDaly eyed him cunningly. “Ha, the gentleman with the beetling brows
is more interested now than he was at first.”
“Does he mean me, the rascal?” growled Camperdown.
Stargarde, suppressing a smile, laid a finger on his arm, and MacDaly in
high glee that he had begun to attract the attention of the people in
the room, hitched his desk a little nearer to the fire and continued
rapidly. “This is firmly believed on account of his many times talking
aloud incoherently to himself, and showing a triumph by swaying his hand
with great violence as he walks along in company with some unsightly
sprite or other in commune with him. Shame, shame, I say, as all do say,
upon him who would foully and peevishly urge wrong from his rancoured
breast to falsely gratify his own appetite and earthly wicked desires by
such assiduous passions.”
“Oh, oh,” groaned Dr. Camperdown; “said the pot to the kettle, thou art
blacker than I.”
“Such a being,” pursued MacDaly with uplifted voice, “cannot expect much
else than to meet a bad end. Yea, melt like butter before the sun. Only
picture the awful end of such a man and in comparison with the terrific
state of Turkey, where there is to come an overpowering smashup and the
dethroning of the sultan. How will this country be governed? I prophesy
that on account of the graceful form, figure, and noble bearing of Lady
Stargarde Turner,” he felt himself now far enough in the favor of his
awakened audience to disregard the command about proper names, “her
chances are many of being made sultana.”
The _habitués_ of the kitchen highly approving of the honor proposed for
their patroness interrupted MacDaly by such a clapping of hands that he
paused for an instant to mop his gratified face.
“Anticipating her ruling such a barbarous, uncouthed people with a
steady rod,” he hurried on, “and reducing the price of raisins and figs,
I would cast a prophetic glance into that future and prophesy again that
Mr. Stanton Armour——”
Armour withdrew his eyes from the fire and cast a haughty glance at the
speaker, which was totally disregarded.
“Will be prime minister,” continued MacDaly. “And Dr. Brian Camperdown,”
he pronounced the words with a mischievous relish and a gasping
emphasis, “will be chosen by the sultana as her sultan.”
Deafening and violent applause broke out, for the news of Stargarde’s
engagement to Dr. Camperdown had spread through the city with almost
incredible rapidity.
Blushing slightly she noted the grim, contented pride displayed on
Camperdown’s face, then listened to MacDaly, who was hastening on.
“Oh, what a mighty change will be in that realm! I may say that cruel
Turkey will be divided and subdivided into a large number of provinces
and that a parliament will be produced by the brilliant ascendency of
its future sultana.”
“Stick to your text, man,” interpolated Camperdown. “We don’t want to
hear nonsense about Turkey. Keep to Halifax.”
“Now, my most noble and illustrious audience,” uttered MacDaly suavely,
“before I close, may I express the humble hope that as in the
contingency of future events we may not all of us ever meet again under
this ardent and hospitable roof, yet we may confront each other where
high and low society are also not visibly recognized, but where all who
are immaculate enough to get there get into good society, where, to use
a homely and worldly phrase, Jack is as good as his master, oftentimes
better, my friends, that is, if poor Jack has got a depraved individual
for his master, as many of us have. Here, in this most noteworthy
family, where again to use a domestic and wooden proverb as I may call
it, signifying that every tub must stand on its own bottom, poor Jack
can never hope to be as good as his master, for he has been felicitous
enough to have for master the Lady Stargarde Turner, who always speaks
in the most amply persuasive and gentle tones to her inferiors at all
times and who is bountiful in the largeness of her heart and the
wonderful magnificence of her nature.”
MacDaly paused here to bow profoundly to Stargarde, then casting an
observing glance upon his amused audience, decided that a further dose
of her praises would be acceptable.
“Before exclaiming farewell,” he said, again lashing himself into a
state of ardor, “let me ask what further thing I can say of this noble
lady who has ever wielded the battle-axe of moral suasion on behalf of
helpless and attenuated humanity. Perhaps I should not use the word
battle-axe in connection with a lady of such refinement who has so long
protected the weak, fed the hungry” (here he looked over his manuscript
with a grin and said, “I can prove that”), “clothed the naked” (he
grinned again and said, “I can prove that too”), “and magnificently
struck out for the right. Therefore trusting that she may pardon her
humble and obsequious servant when he says that the mighty things she
has accomplished have struck terror into the hearts of evil-doers,
comparatively speaking, and can only properly be compared to work done
with an axe—yea, and a mighty work at that. In conclusion, I may say
that I hope we shall meet many times more in health and wealth,
happiness and abundance of affectionate recollections of our past and
present meetings. So farewell for the present; and believe me to be,
ladies and gentlemen, your very well-wishing and obliged servant,
Derrick Edward Fitz-James O’Grady MacDaly. Thanks, very much.”
The lecturer bowed, put his manuscript in his pocket, and mingling
affably with his hearers received with modesty the joking compliments
showered upon him.
Stargarde watched him in intense amusement.
“Why is he fiddling with that sword?” asked Camperdown, sauntering up to
her.
“Oh the entertainment is only half over,” and she framed an announcement
that she wished him to make.
Camperdown rose and proclaimed in a stentorian voice, “The future
sultana of Turkey orders an exhibition of sword exercise by Professor
MacDaly.”
Everybody sat down, and the Irish Nova Scotian modestly retiring behind
the reading desk from which a perfectly clear view could be had of his
proceedings, stripped off his red jacket and drew his sword from its
scabbard. Striding to the middle of the room he looked in Stargarde’s
direction, and began prancing on one foot and then on the other
ejaculating, “Right guard, left guard, cut, thrust, parry,” etc., and
swinging himself backward and forward with such startling rapidity that
the lookers-on were obliged to tumble into corners and nearly fall over
each other into the fire to avoid what seemed to be an avenging weapon.
It was a frolic for MacDaly, and the fun grew fast and furious, till
Stargarde, noticing Armour sheltering Vivienne and Judy behind a heap of
chairs, and looking as if he thought the performance a trifle
undignified, gave the signal to stop.
The children present were shrieking with laughter, but their faces were
sobered when the doorkeeper flung the startling announcement into the
room that the candy had been stolen from the veranda.
“Buy more,” exclaimed Camperdown. “Off to the restaurant with you!
Here’s money—and order cake and coffee for the grown-ups.”
MacDaly approached Stargarde with a mincing step and murmured something
about his confident audacity that would seize the passing moment.
“Certainly,” she replied, “but coppers only. I’ll take the silver away
from you.”
The delighted man accordingly made a circuit of the room, his heart
gladdened by the clash of Canadian cents descending into the capacious
receptacle of his tall hat.
Upon the arrival of the refreshments a time of feasting began in the
kitchen. The soldiers, with the efficiency of trained waiters, took
charge of the coffee and cake. The children revolved huge lumps of taffy
in their mouths, and Armour with something like dismay watched the
alarming disposition of sweets by the aged granny.
Stargarde was just about to send the rioting children bedward, when her
attention was attracted by a commotion at the door.
Camperdown sprang up, but he was too late. What he had dreaded for
weeks, with an agony of shame and dread, had come to pass. Of no avail
now his lavish bribes and ceaseless supervision.
The astonished doorkeeper had received a blow on the chest, and had gone
spinning into a corner of the fireplace, whence he skipped nimbly and
stared at his assailant; tattered, unspeakably dirty, Mrs. Frispi, who
towered in the doorway wrathful and menacing, mumbling something in a
drunken fury at him, which no one understood.
With a low, joyful cry Stargarde sprang up and went to her. At last the
woman had come to the Pavilion of her own accord.
“You be a beauty, bain’t you?” said the woman thickly, “barrin’ the door
to yer own mother.”
Stargarde did not quite catch her words. Camperdown did, and tried to
draw his _fiancée_ back.
“No, Brian,” she said firmly. “I have waited a long time for this. Let
us get her in by the fire.”
Close at the woman’s heels, like a cowed, sulky dog, walked the small
man, her husband. “Come in too,” said Stargarde, extending a hand to
him.
“We be turned out,” he said, with a covert glance about the room, and
hanging his head as if the bright light hurt his eyes. “No money; big
man say, ‘You go to de streeta.‘”
The woman in exasperation at the withdrawal of attention from her,
seized Stargarde by the shoulder. “Don’t you hear?” she gasped hoarsely.
“I—be—your—mother.”
The words were audible, though indistinct. A surprised, incredulous look
overspread Stargarde’s beautiful face. “Brian,” she said, turning to him
as if she could not trust the evidence of her own sense of hearing,
“what does she say?”
He would not repeat the words, but in his ashamed, mortified face she
received confirmation of her own half-born idea.
“My mother!” she exclaimed, still in a dazed state of semi-belief; “my
mother that I have searched for so long!”
“Yes; you be my daughter, and what be daughters for but to work for
their mothers?” snarled Mrs. Frispi, suddenly collapsing and sinking
into a chair. “And—who’s that?” she stammered, turning her swollen,
distorted face toward Stanton Armour, who stood in handsome, deathly
pallor, and as motionless as a statue beyond her.
“Oh, my God!” and mouthing, swearing, unutterably foul and repulsive,
she groveled from her chair to the floor.
“Oh, tell me, some one,” cried Stargarde wildly, “what is it she says?
Is it true?”
“It be true,” said Frispi eagerly. Then stepping forward he plunged his
hand among the rags over his wife’s broad chest and withdrew a filthy
envelope, out of which he drew a photograph that he handed to Stargarde.
It was a picture of Mrs. Frispi, taken in her palmy days. Stargarde laid
a hand on her own fluttering breast. There was a counterpart of this
florid, sensuous face that she had treasured for years.
She drew out her own photograph. It was exactly like the other; her
intense blue eyes darted to the floor. There in that tall form, in the
evil face, she could see a faint, disfigured likeness to herself.
“O God, I thank thee!” she said, and fell on her knees to put her arms
about the degraded creature before her.
Where was the terror, the repulsion, the anguish that the sight was to
cause her? Camperdown gazed at her in distracted astonishment, then
hopelessly surveyed the hushed, motionless ring of people beyond them.
“Brian,” said Stargarde, in tones of ineffable love, “we must take her
home.”
At the first shock of her words, he started back with a gesture of utter
detestation. He loved her, but he could not touch her mother.
Then he sprang forward, but he was too late. Neither disappointed nor
surprised by his refusal, Stargarde gathered the loathsome and
disgraceful specimen of fallen womanhood to her own tender bosom, and
lovingly enwrapping it in her arms went out in the night.