BY JUSTIN H. McCARTHY, M. P.
KISMET.
But, ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose.
That youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close.
OMAR KHAYYAM.
“Hulloa, Jacynth!”
Jacynth awoke from his reverie with a start and stared at the speaker.
He had quite forgotten where he was. Through the gray smoke of his
cigarette he had conjured, as from some magic vapor, an enchanting
face--a girl’s face--with hazel eyes and wonderful tan-colored hair. He
had been in dreamland, and now he was only in the gardens of the hotel,
and instead of his exquisite vision he found facing him a fat little
man in white linen, who looked very hot and very jolly.
“I say, Jacynth, don’t you remember me?”
Jacynth did not remember, at least fully. He had a dim consciousness
that the fat little figure ought to be familiar to him, but he could
not remember where or why. He had not quite collected himself yet, and
he was slightly annoyed at the interruption to his day-dream. Also
he was annoyed at being annoyed and being discomposed by anything. No
perplexing witness, no hostile counsel, no antagonistic judge had ever
been known to ruffle Clitheroe Jacynth’s imperturbability. But then no
vision with tan-colored hair and hazel eyes had ever come into court
with him. He looked at the fat white figure, and shook his head gravely.
“But I say, hang it all, Jacynth, don’t you remember that night in
Cairo, and the dancing girls and the hasheesh den, and the row and all
the rest of it?”
Memory asserted herself in Jacynth’s mind. He did remember a night in
Cairo when a party of young fellows from Shepheard’s set out to see
something of the queer Cairene slums. The fat little man was of the
party; he was in white then, too, Jacynth remembered. He remembered,
too, how hugely the little man had enjoyed everything, from the--well,
the eccentricities of the dancing girls to the fumes in the hasheesh
den, and even to the final scrimmage in the gambling hell, when Jacynth
by a timely stroke saved his fat companion from being knifed by a
Levantine rogue who had been detected in cheating. There was an awful
row afterward; he remembered that, too, and an awkward business before
the authorities next morning, but the names of his friends and his own
legal reputation settled the matter. Yes, he remembered the fat little
man now. He got up with a smile on his dark, clean-shaven face and held
out his hand.
“How are you, Lord Castleton?”
Lord Castleton laughed. That was his way. He went through life
laughing, as if everything were the best joke in the world.
“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me,” he said. “By Jove! I haven’t
forgotten you, and that turn of the wrist which sent that Levantine
devil’s toothpick spinning. Well, and how are you?”
The men had sat down beside each other on the garden chair. Castleton
produced a cigarette-case almost as fat as himself, on which a
daintily-painted ballet girl disported.
“Try one!” he said; “they are ripping. Bingham Pasha sent them to me
himself. He got them from the Sultan.”
Jacynth took a cigarette, lit it from the end of his own, Castleton
watching him all the time with the most jocular expression.
“You’re not looking very fit,” he said. “Those confounded courts, I
suppose. By Jove! I shouldn’t like to be a lawyer.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” Jacynth said; “I’m not taking the waters here. My
sister lives here, and I’ve a festive little nephew. I only came here
for a rest. I don’t quite know why I came here just now though. Kismet,
I suppose.”
As he spoke that same vision of face and hair and eyes floated up
before him.
Castleton laughed more boisterously than ever.
“Ah! Kismet, the dear old word. Yes, I suppose it’s fate that makes us
do most of the things which we seem to do for no particular reason.”
“Has Kismet brought you here?” Jacynth inquired. “You seem fit enough
at all events.”
“Fit, my dear fellow? not at all.”
It was one of Castleton’s little jocularities with life to consider
himself likely at any moment to become a confirmed invalid. “I was up
in Bagdad, and I picked up an English paper which said that Harrogate
was looking lovely, and somehow I felt homesick and seedy, and all that
sort of thing, so I just cut the East and came slap on here.”
“Do you know,” said Jacynth gravely, “that there are moments when I
feel much more inclined to cut the West and go, as you say, ‘slap on’
to some sleepy Eastern place--Bagdad perhaps, or Japan--and dream away
the rest of my life.”
“The rest of your life? You talk as if you were ninety!” And Castleton
slapped his fat little leg merrily.
“Don’t you know what the man-at-arms says in Thackeray’s ballad?”
Jacynth replied. “‘Wait till you come to forty year.’ Well, I have come
to forty year, pretty nearly. I was thirty-nine three weeks ago--and
do you know, Castleton, there are times when I’m tired of the whole
business.”
“By Jove! what would the judges say if they heard the famous Clitheroe
Jacynth talking like this?”
“My dear fellow, I’m not famous, and if I were, what’s the good of
being famous at the price of becoming a fossil?”
“Do you know,” said Castleton, with a grin, “I believe you must be
mashed on somebody or other, by Jove, I do. If you talk----”
Before Castleton had finished his sentence he became aware that Jacynth
was not paying him much attention. In fact, Jacynth’s gaze seemed to
be directed very intently toward the end of the garden, and Jacynth’s
mind appeared to be giving no heed whatever to Castleton’s amiable
garrulity. So Castleton, following the direction of his friend’s
glance, saw in the distance a woman’s form, a form that was familiar to
him, a form that he had already seen that day.
“By Jove!” said Castleton to himself softly. He had no time to say
more, even to himself, for Jacynth had jumped to his feet and was
bidding him good-by.
“Glad to have met you, hope to see you soon again.” These were the
words Jacynth was saying, with a confusion curiously at variation with
his habitual composure. He shook Castleton warmly by the hand, and
moved away so rapidly that Castleton’s, “Why, my dear boy, of course
you will; I shall stop here for ever so long,” was delivered to the
empty air.
“By Jove!” Castleton said again, this time aloud, as he watched
Jacynth’s rapid advance in the direction of the girl. “By Jove, he’s
struck, like all the lot. Poor devil! I’ll stay here and give him a
hint presently. Oh, poor devil, poor devil!” And Castleton’s jolly face
expressed as much honest commiseration as its ruddy plumpness permitted.
In the meantime, Jacynth, walking rapidly, had met the girl. She smiled
a welcome to him, and stopped as he stopped. Her face seemed troubled,
he thought, in spite of its enchanting smile.
“How grave you look,” he began, for want of anything better to say.
“How grave you look,” she retorted, with a flash of the familiar
enchanting audacity, as she looked up into his grave dark face.
“I have something to say to you,” said Jacynth. The remark was
commonplace enough, but he felt his voice fail as he said it, and he
knew by the sudden heat in his face that the blood was filling his pale
cheeks.
The sound of his voice evidently impressed the girl, for she looked
up at him with a sudden start, and her reply was queerly girlish and
puzzled.
“What is it?” Then, as if she felt suddenly conscious of a blunder, or
of unexpected knowledge, she tried to add other words:
“I mean, of course--I do not understand--I am looking for Ronny.”
“Ronny is quite safe,” said Jacynth gravely. “He is still at cricket
with Harold. What I have to say does concern him though, a little.”
“Concern Ronny!” There was a genuine note of alarm in the girl’s fresh
voice, and she looked up at Jacynth with a wistful trouble in her eyes.
“Concern Ronny! Why, what have you to say about Ronny?”
“Can you give me a few moments?” he asked. “It is quiet here.”
He pointed to a pathway more secluded than the rest, a pathway with a
rustic garden chair, a deserted pathway.
“Shall we sit here for a minute?” he said, and they walked to the
rustic seat, and sat down side by side. There was a curious look of
alarm in the hazel-colored eyes, but Jacynth did not notice it, for he
was looking down, tracing a word upon the ground with his stick, and
the word that he traced was the word he had used but now, Kismet.
“What do you want to say to me?” He could hear a hard ring in her
voice, and looking up he saw a hardness in her eyes, and his lips
trembled.
“We have been very good friends,” he began, and faltered. She caught
him up.
“We have been good friends,” she said. “If you wish us to be good
friends any more you will not say what it is just possible that you may
think of saying. There are some words which will estrange us for ever.”
Jacynth looked at her despairingly. How exquisitely lovely she looked,
like some angel of youth, some vision of summer in that autumnal
garden. His heart seemed to be beating very fast, his eyes were hot,
and his lips dry, and his hands trembled feverishly.
“Listen!” he said, and as he spoke his own voice sounded far away
and unfamiliar like the voice of some shadow encountered in a dream.
“Listen! I love you with all my heart. Hush! let me say what I have
got to say”--for she had turned to him, half appealing, as if to
interrupt his declaration--“I daresay you may think it very audacious
of me to love you--or, at least, for I could not help loving you, to
tell you so. I know that you are beautiful enough and good enough to
be addressed by better men than I. I should have been content with my
secret love and held my peace. But I couldn’t--I couldn’t.”
He paused for a moment. She laid her hand on his gently, and he
trembled at her touch. “I am very sorry,” she began, but he went on
again wildly:
“I am not quite a fool. Men who are not quite fools either say that I
have a great career before me. I have made something of a name as it
is, although I may still almost speak of myself as a young man. You
shall be proud of me, indeed, I promise you that, if you will only let
me serve you. Life is all a game of chances, but if you will take this
chance, I do not think that you will regret it. Your lover will not be
quite unworthy of your love.”
“I am very, very sorry,” she said, “but you have said the words which
must divide us. I did like you, I do like you very much, but we cannot
be friends any more.”
“You cannot love me,” he said slowly.
“I cannot love you--and I know we cannot be friends. You are not that
kind of man. It would tear your heart to pieces. Better one wrench at
once and be done with it. And I am not the kind of woman to accept
friendship that I knew was only a mask for love.”
“You cannot love me?” he asked again monotonously, like a man repeating
some set formula.
“I cannot love you. I have played with my life in my own way, and as I
have played so I will pay. Now, good-by, I know you too well and trust
you too well to fear that you will trouble me at all. You will go away,
I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Jacynth moodily, “I will go away.”
“Thank you, and good-by.” She moved away swiftly, and he stood there
staring after her until she disappeared inside the hotel.
Jacynth walked moodily back into the garden and stared sullenly at
the bright sky. If the autumn day, so warm that it might have been
midsummer, had suddenly changed to winter, it could not have looked
colder or more dismal to his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. “So
that’s all over,” he said to himself bitterly; “you have played your
stake and you have lost, and now you must remember that it is your
duty to play the man and not the fool.” Thrusting his hands into his
pockets he began to walk slowly down the garden path, feeling very
dull and dizzy, like a man who has had a heavy fall. He was thinking,
or trying to think, of things which interested him so deeply once, and
which now seemed so strangely uninteresting, when his meditations were
interrupted. He found himself confronted by Castleton, who was eying
him sympathetically.
“Old man,” said Castleton, “you saved my life once, and though it
wasn’t much worth saving, I’m devilish grateful to you all the same. So
I’d like to do you a good turn now if I can.”
“You can’t do me any good,” Jacynth answered, “there’s nothing the
matter with me. Don’t talk rot, there’s a good fellow.”
“There’s a great deal the matter with you, and I can do you good,”
Castleton answered. “I can tell you all about that woman.”