The wind howled round the house, and whuffled in the chimney, and sent
spurts of sweet-scented smoke to mingle with the fuller flavour of
Graeme's tobacco. The walls were bare plaster, discoloured with age
and careless usage. The chairs were common kitchen chairs, and the
table a plain deal one. But the driftwood burned with flames whose
forked tongues sang silently but eloquently of wanderings under many
skies, of rainbow isles in sunny seas, of vivid golden days and the
black wonders of tropic nights, of storms and calms, and all the
untold mysteries of the pitiless sea.
But to two at least of the party--and perhaps even to three--that bare
room was radiant beyond any they had ever known.
Orange and amber lightening into sunshine, purple into heliotrope,
tender greens and lucent blues, burning crimson and fiery red, were
the flames of the driftwood, and in these surely the imagination may
find its happiest auguries. For if the dancing flames, out of their
chastened knowledge, sang only of the past, in the minds of their
watchers they were singing of futures brighter and more glowing than
anything the past had ever known. And so, to two at least of
them,--and perhaps to three,--never surely was there room so radiant
as that bare room in that empty house on Brecqhou.
Miss Penny had the high endowment of a large heart, a wide
imagination, and sentiment sufficient for a high-class girls'
boarding-school.
She found herself for the moment out of place, yet she could not
remove herself without too obvious an intention. She did the next best
thing. She settled herself on her chair in a corner, slipped off her
shoes, sat on her feet, and went to sleep.
Margaret, indeed, glanced at her suspiciously once or twice, without
moving her head by so much as a hair's-breadth. But she seemed really
and truly asleep, and for a moment Margaret was amazed that anyone
could think of sleep in that enchanted room. But then she remembered
that it was different--Hennie was Hennie, and she was she, and it was
for her that the crystal ball of life had opened of a sudden and shown
the radiance within.
How long they sat in silence before the rainbow fire she never knew.
Hennie was snoring gently--purring as one might say--in the most
genuinely ingenuous fashion.
Graeme, in the riot of happy possibilities evoked by the disclosure of
Mr. Pixley's perfidy, would have been content to sit there for ever,
since Margaret was at his side. It was enough to know that she was
there. He did not need to turn his head to enjoy the sight of her with
gross material vision. Every tight-strung fibre of his being told him
of her nearness, in ways compared with which sight and sound and touch
are gross and feeble travesties of communication. Their spirits surely
reached out and touched in that silent communion before the rainbow
fire.
There were many things he wanted to ask her now. But they could wait,
they could wait. The Doubting Castles he had built in his despair had
had no foundations. He was building anew already, and now with rosy
hope and golden faith, and the topstones of his building mingled with
the stars.
He woke of a sudden to a sense of lack of consideration for her in his
own enjoyment. Doubtless she was tired out, and was only kept from
following Miss Penny's example by his crass stupidity in sitting there
in that stolid fashion.
"Pray forgive me!" he said, as he rose quietly. "You must be tired,
too. I will take the other room and you can join Miss Penny."
"I'm not the least tired. I never felt more awake in my life. Surely
the wind has fallen."
He went to the door and opened it and looked out.
"It is only a lull. It will probably blow up again stronger than
ever," and as he turned he found her at his elbow.
"Let us go outside," she said, and he could have taken her into his
arms. Instead, he tiptoed across the room and got her cloak, and
placed it on her shoulders with a new, vast sense of proprietorship.
He knew just how she felt. Even that room of rare delights was not
large enough just then for her and for him. The whole wide world, and
the illimitable heights of the heavens, could scarce contain that
which was in them. Their hearts were full, and that which was in them
was that of which God is the ultimate perfection. And in their ears,
in the gaps of the storm, was the roaring thunder of the great white
waves as they tore along the black sides of Brecqhou.
"Tell me more about those letters," she said briefly. "What did you
write?"
"I wrote, nominally, to inform you of Lady Elspeth's sudden call to
Scotland, but actually to tell you how sorely I regretted the sudden
break in our acquaintance which had become to me so very great a
delight."
"And when you got no answer?"
"I waited and waited, and then I had a sudden fear that you might be
ill. And to satisfy myself I called on Mr. Pixley at his office. He
told me you were quite well, that you had had my letters, and had
handed them to him."
"Anything more?"
"Yes,--he said you were shortly to marry his son."
"That is what he wished,--and that is why I am here."
"Thank God! Then I may tell you, Margaret. I had been building castles
and you were mistress of them all and of my whole heart. When Mr.
Pixley knocked them into dust I came here to fight it out by myself,
and a black time I had. Then God, in His goodness, put it into your
heart to come too. Will you marry me, Margaret?"
"Yes, Jock."
And there, in the lull of the gale, in the lee of the lonely house on
Brecqhou, they plighted their troth with no more need of feeble words,
for their hearts had gone out to one another.
And all along the gaunt black rocks the great waves, which a moment
before had been growling in dull agony, roared a mighty chorus of
delight, and rolled it up the sloping seams of Longue Pointe, and
flashed it on in thunderous bursts of foam from Bec-du-Nez to L'Etac.
And Miss Henrietta Penny, awakening about this time, and finding
herself alone, laughed happily to herself, and sighed just once, and
said from her heart, "God bless them!"--and did not go to sleep again,
though to look at her you would never have known it, save for the fact
that she no longer purred in her sleep,--for the woman has yet to be
born who ever pleaded guilty to actual snoring.